294
NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
the morning of April 12th last," W. Cole. Mr. E. Jerrard Wills writes
that he saw the Com Crake at Nazeing on April 12th; the Wryneck (lynx
torquilla) on April 13th ; Martins on April 13th; and Cuckoo on April 15th
evening, and several on the morning of the 16th. " I heard the Nightingale at
Tiptree Heath on the morning of April 16th," H. A. Cole. The Cuckoo was
heard in Lord's Bushes, Epping Forest, on April 18th, by Miss Jane Cole
INSECTA.
LEPIDOPTERA
Abundance of Pieris brassicae.—One noteworthy fact this spring has
been the abundance of the handsome "Large White Butterfly." Dozens at
a time have been seen in the lanes and fields, and even in the depths of the
forest it has been the commonest butterfly. The fine insect has invaded the
streets of London, and has furnished the "penny-a-liners" with startling
"copy." The extraordinary fluctuations of the occurrence of this insect are
doubtless connected with its migratory habits, of which an example at
Harwich was recorded in the Essex Naturalist, vol. vi , p. 205.
Amphydasis prodromaria in February.—I was surprised to find a male
"Oak Beauty" at rest on a trunk in Lodge Bushes, Epping Forest, on
February nth. Surely an extremely early exit from the pupa.—W. Cole,
Buckhurst Hill.
MISCELLANEA.
Col. Mudge's Map of Essex.—Referring to Mr. Avery's enquiry
respecting this Map at the Meeting on February 26th last (ante p. 255), Mr.
Walter Crouch gives some details of this early Ordnance issue :—"The
chief feature of interest lies in the fact that the map was produced by a more
perfect Ordnance Trigonometrical survey, and is, therefore, far more correct
than any of the earlier maps, not omitting even that fine large-scale survey
(two inches to each mile) made by Chapman and Andre, the original edition
of which was published in 1777, and the second edition in 1785, the latter
bearing the name 'Keymer,' of Colchester, who had purchased the plates.
Although one can scarcely call Mudge's map a common one, it is not so rare,
I think, as many have supposed ; I have scan and noted more than half-a-
dozen copies.
'For notices of many of the Mudge family, vide The Diet, of National
Biography, vol. xxxix., pp. 254-262. Col. Mudge, F.R.S., who was born in
1762, was a godson of Dr. Johnson, and it is to this mathematical mapmaker
that Wordsworth alludes in his poem on 'Black Combe', written 1813. The
doctrine of heredity gains strength from the fact that his father, Dr. John
Mudge, F.R.S., was not only a skilled physician, but learned in the con-
struction of telescopes, and in 1777 won the Copley medal of the Royal Society
for the composition and grinding of a true parabolic speculum for these
instruments ; while his grandfather, the Rev. Zachariah Mudge, Prebend of
Exeter, was painted three times by his friend, Sir Joshua Reynolds, who
spoke of him as the wisest man he had met in his life,' and whose obituary
and character were penned by Dr. Johnson.