74
THE LEPIDOPTERA OF ESSEX.
PART I.—BUTTERFLIES.
By EDWARD A. FITCH, F.L.S., F.E.S., etc.
[Read December 2nd, 1890]
OF the sixty-five British butterflies, fifty-five have been known to
occur within our borders—a larger number than I can find
recorded for any other county. Mr. Porritt's Yorkshire list of
Lepidoptera includes forty-eight species of Diurni, and the Rev. E. N.
Bloomfield is now able to catalogue fifty-four species, and three
doubtful records, for Suffolk. Mr. Cockerell gives forty-one species
for Middlesex, several of which are certainly doubtful records.
Hence our district may be looked upon as rich in species, and the
individuals in many cases are fairly numerous. With regard to the
completeness of this catalogue it is only necessary to observe that it
contains notes of all the species that have been recorded, as far as
a tolerably exhaustive survey of our general entomological literature
enables me to judge. No MSS. or "Marked Lists" have been asked
for, or used in its compilation ; there is always so much difficulty in
authenticating captures, and in getting notes of precise localities.
With the aid of our Club and the Essex Naturalist, it is to be
hoped that many local lists may yet be forthcoming, similar to those
we have already published by the Rev. G. H. Raynor (Trans.
E.F.C. iii. 30-47) and Mr. Howard Vaughan (E.N. iii. 123-140.).
These local lists are interesting and helpful, and act as a stimulus to
others to endeavour to make additions to the records in their own
immediate localities. Several such lists are already promised, and
the publication of the present general list for the whole county will
in no way make them less useful.
My catalogue cannot be considered as complete; we know there
are yet many unexplored spots in Essex, and there are few localities
that have been at all exhaustively worked (cf. my remarks, E.N. iii.
98-99.) Only this year a new butterfly has been added to the British
list, and it was first found in Essex (F. W. Hawes, Ent. xxiii. 3).
Hesperia lineola has been an overlooked species, and thought to be
only a variety of the common H. thaumus. Mr. Hawes took his
specimens in what is now but the remnant of an old locality, Hartley
Wood, a spot that has been well worked for at least a century (see Miss