THE LEPIDOPTERA OF ESSEX.
77
of his (a female who was considerably interested in entomology),
who saw the specimen after capture, was certain she had seen others
many years ago, but not lately. Since Mr. Mills has left this neigh-
bourhood I have come into possession of two specimens, also taken
at Tillingham by Miss Hance, at least fifty years ago (referred to,
E.N. ii. 242). Mr. Raynor records a specimen caught at Maldon
by Mr. Gutteridge, in August, 1872 (Ent. vi. 223). Dr. Gutteridge
has confirmed this to me, and there is no evidence of its introduction
artificially.
Cornelius Walford, then of Witham, saw a specimen on Tiptree
Heath in 1838 (E.L.J. 27).
Mr. Harwood has known it to occur several times at Walton-on-
Naze, on the authority of Thomas Catchpole, and D. B. Brightwell
(caught by one of his pupils). A very likely locality, as it is the only
station for Peucedanum officinale in Essex, which has been known
there from Ray's time to the present ; it is also curious that P. palustre,
still the favourite food-plant of this species in the Fens, was
recorded as an Essex plant in the "Flora" only from Epping Forest,
by John Ray formerly of Epping. Between the years 1848 and 1850
Mr. H. Doubleday turned out a number of P. machaon in parts of
Epping Forest, apparently an old locality for this butterfly, but it did
not again establish itself (Proc. E.F.C, ii. lxxx).2
The Rev. H. H. Crewe says, "The family of a clergyman residing
near Ipswich told me they had taken machaon on the banks of the
[Essex and Suffolk] Stour" (B.B. 153). W. Gaze records three speci-
mens taken near Haverhill, by different collectors in 1841 (Ent. i.
307), and writes later: "On enquiry I found it has several times
been taken in that place" (Ent. i. 340). In 1867, '68 or '69, my
cousins, Herbert and Arthur Fitch, caught three specimens for me at
Clare Priory, where they were at school; two in one year, and one in
another, and I have no doubt whatever but that they were residents,
and should not be at all surprised to learn that machaon still lingers
around the sources of the Stour on the Essex and Suffolk border.
Mr. W. R. Jeffrey records it from Saffron Walden, but adds,
'Supposed to have been brought to the neighbourhood in the
2 Mr. Maynard, Curator of the Saffron Walden Museum, writes: "Some years since an un-
successful attempt was made to naturalise P. machaon in this neighbourhood by the late Mr.
G. S. Gibson and Mr. W. M. Tuke, who procured a large quantity of caterpillars from Wicken
Fen, Cambridgeshire. These were placed in a field of carrots, upon the tops of which they fed
and seemed at first likely to do well, until they were found out by the birds, who soon made
short work of the colony, and not one specimen was ever seen in the imago state." It is interest-
ing to note that many of the old records indicate that P. machaon was formerly a garden insect
in England (as it is still on the Continent) although now confined with us to the Fen districts.
—Ed.