208
THE ESSEX NATURALIST
Mr. J. T. Friedlein of North Fambridge, writes that he has not seen it
in his district, neither has Mr. A. J. Dewick, of Bradwell-on-Sea. The
former remarks that it probably occurs near the Hertfordshire border. It
does not figure in a list of butterflies collected in Woodham Mortimer in
1946 by Mr. F. F. Laidlaw (1948). Neither does it figure in a list of
butterflies observed within seven miles of Felsted School or in Hatfield
Forest 1947-1950 by the Felsted School Natural History Society (1951).
Mr. A. R. Ness, of Ilford, who has a lifetime experience of Lepidoptera,
has encountered the species only twice in the county. A single specimen at
High Laver, 4th August, 1939, and one at Hainault Forest, 30th July,
1943. He also took a single specimen at Much Hadham, Hertfordshire in
1933.
Mr. Paul Smart heard of a single tattered specimen taken in 1952 in a
garden near the "Crooked Billet", Walthamstow. The captor informed
him that he had released the insect when he enquired if he had ever
encountered the species in the county.
The specimen which prompted this review was a single very worn male
taken by Mr. Paul Smart near Bell Common, Epping Forest, on 11th
October, 1953 (a particularly fine and warm day) during the Club's Fungus
Foray and exhibited by the captor at the tea-time meeting on the same
day.
Records concerning the former abundance and subsequent disappearance
of the species from the county appear in The Essex Naturalist as follows:—
Mr. G. H. Raynor (1883) gave the Maldon district localities as Hazeleigh,
Purleigh, Danbury and Woodham Ferrers Hall Wood.
Mr. Howard Vaughan (1889) writing of the period 1860-1875, stated that
it occurred at Eastwood i.e. "the woods extending from Leigh Heath to
Hadleigh village and northwards" and classed it with P. megera, as
common.
Mr. E. A. Fitch (1891) wrote "Common in most woods in the county
and about hedgerows on their outskirts; generally distributed, but not
everywhere, mostly local. Quite absent now in Colchester district where
it was formerly common. Mr. Harwood has not seen one for about ten
years". Mr. B. Gr. Cole added the note: "Still very common in Monks
Wood, Epping Forest."
The Cole Collection has a fairly comprehensive series of the species
taken in Monks Wood, Epping Forest in 1874 and 1890.
Professor R. Meldola (1891) who collected in the Leyton district and
Epping Forest from 1869 to 1874 stated that it was never seen at Leyton
but commonly in the Forest.
In the Victoria County History, a Colchester entomologist, Mr. W.
Harwood (1903) wrote that it "was common in Eastern Counties in the
middle of the past century but ere its close had vanished completely from
nearly all its former haunts, though Mr. B. G. Cole found it still common
in Epping Forest about 1890. Why it disappeared is a mystery for it was
common in nearly every copse and shady place and abounded in some woods
where it was quite unmolested by collectors".
Mr. A. W. Mera (1928) writing of the butterflies of Epping Forest
said that the Speckled Wood "is a species which has disappeared within
my memory. In 1868 it was fairly common in the higher parts of the
Forest. Soon after that year I saw the last of it".
There is a specimen in the Mera collection labelled "Epping Forest,
1865".