HENRY DOUBLEDAY, EPPING NATURALIST 321
his brush and tin of "treacling" mixture, his lanthorn, net and
collecting boxes; but he did not neglect the likely spots near
at home, and he wrote in a letter to The Entomologist in 1875:
"There is a row of 17 lime trees in the field adjoining my
garden, and I have sugared the trunks for more than 30
years in every month, except the four winter ones—
November, December, January, February. Upon these
trees I have captured nearly every Noctua which occurs
in this neighbourhood".
On these trees he had also taken all the British Xanthias (Sallows)
except aurago (Barred), by 1871.
It was fitting that he should be such an adept at this pro-
cedure, which has been followed by moth hunters ever since, as
he it was who first put it into practice, having noticed how empty
sugar hogsheads, placed in the yard of his warehouse at the back
of his shop, attracted many insects.
Although the problems of identification, and the study of the
habits of lepidoptera undoubtedly became his engrossing interest,
particularly in his later years, yet throughout his life all other
aspects of natural history claimed his attention. He gave
observations on most families of insects, and in 1871 he listed no
less than 30 species of dragonflies, which to his knowledge had
occurred in the vicinity of the Epping Forest ponds. His
numerous remarks on the frogs, lizards, bats, and other local
fauna may be found in the various scientific journals of his day.
His letters to The Phytologist, and a study of his correspond-
ence, show also his great interest in plant life, and indeed he was
always particularly proud of his garden, where he cultivated many
flowers and plants which also served as foodplants for the
numerous species of larvae he bred. His excellent results in
cultivating strawberries became very well known to his friends,
and a correspondent once observed, "We shrewdly suspect that
some of his numerous friends contrived to fix the period of their
visits in the strawberry season". He was responsible for first
recognising the true, or Bardfield, Oxlip (Primula elatior) in this
country, and this discovery was first recorded in The Phytologist
in 1842. He frequently visited Great Bardfield, where his cousin
Richard Smith lived, and he found it there, in the meadows beside
the river. Edward, when reporting his brother's conclusions to
the London Botanical Society, stated that Henry had examined
thousands of plants at and near Bardfield, and had never observed
a single instance of a solitary flower being thrown up in the
hybrid. The plant is restricted in this county to an area close to
Cambridgeshire and Suffolk.
Mention has already been made of how Henry's lack of
business acumen led to the decline in the trade of the grocery and
hardware shop in Epping High Street, which was, in the time of
his parents, a flourishing and prosperous concern. To make things
worse, in 1866 a local bank in which he had invested much of his