SOME ESSEX NATURALISTS 325
the subject of the Bardfield Oxlip and he took a great interest
in his garden at the back of his premises, where he cultivated
flowers and fruit.
His leading passion was for entomology, particularly the
Lepidoptera, and in this subject he was an undoubted
authority. He was equally at home with the study of
dragonflies, and many of the records of Epping Forest
species are due to his observations.
In 1843, Doubleday paid a brief visit to Paris, where he
met some Continental entomologists and found that the
system of classifying and naming insects on the Continent
was very different from that in use in England. Upon his
return, he set himself the task of bringing the names in use
in England into line with the accepted Continental usage
with a view to making the two uniform. This work even-
tually took him nearly 30 years, but to entomologists
"Doubleday's List", as it was known, proved to be of great
value.
In 1848 his father died and the whole burden of the
business fell upon him. This very considerably limited his
activities, and when we recall that in addition to his busi-
ness he was the local agent for the Sun Fire Insurance
Office, the treasurer of the local Turnpike Trust and of the
Poor Law Union, it will be appreciated that he could have
had little spare time, and subsequently, apart from two
nights and a period in hospital, he never was away from
his home. He did not marry, and for the last 30 years of
his life a distant cousin kept house for him.
It was Doubleday who devised the system for catching
moths known to entomologists as "sugaring", which is the
application of a treacly mixture to the trunks of trees which
attracts the moths and they can then be readily caught.
He was a shy and retiring man, and persons who met
him for the first time found him difficult to get on with, but
once the ice was broken acquaintance ripened into friendship
and he proved extremely generous, not only with help and
advice but he freely gave entomological specimens to
students of the subject.
In 1866 he had a heavy pecuniary loss, and although he
tried to make light of his monetary troubles a crisis came in
1870 and it looked as if everything would have to be sold,