20
after a distinguished career in the Royal Navy. He
published lists for the Harwich area in The Entomologist
for 1903 and 1912, but is chiefly remembered for his
discovery of the moth called Mathew's wainscot, which
is a submaritime species resembling but distinct from
the common wainscot.
Most Essex entomologists lived round the borders of the
county, but the home of W. S. Gilles was in Bocking at
its heart, not far, indeed, from Black Notley where our
story started with John Ray. Gilles made an extensive
collection of specimens from the county and was working
on an Essex list at the time of his sudden death in 1938.
He bequeathed his collection and papers to Cambridge
University but the bequest was refused through lack of
accommodation. His collection and notes were sold
piecemeal by auction and a valuable source of information
for the future historian was lost through dispersal.
Let me conclude by returning to the south-east of the
county, where in the 10 x 10 km. square that includes
Southend more than 1,270 species of Lepidoptera have
been recorded, possibly more than in any other square
in Britain. Two great entomologists await consideration.
The first is F. H. Frohawk who spent 18 years in the
county, living first at Rayleigh and then at Thundersley.
Frohawk wrote one of the best books and painted some
of the best plates of British butterflies. He bred
every species from the egg and was largely responsible
for unravelling the remarkable symbiotic relationship
between ants and the larva of the large blue butterfly.
His original plates were destroyed in an air-raid during
World War 2, but so good were they that they were
re-drawn from the printed version and used again in
Graham Howarth's South's British Butterflies.
The second figure is Harry Huggins, who died only ten
years ago. He spent much of his life at Leigh-on-Sea
and was the first collector to use a mercury vapour
light trap in that area. He was perhaps unfortunate
in living in such an intensively recorded region, since