motive at this time for publishing lists was less an interest in insect distribution
than a desire to advertise captures for exchange purposes; consequently in
many of the lists exact localities were not specified.
In the nineteenth century field work was patterned on the railway system; the
only localities which could be visited in a day were those within walking
distance of a station, such as the southern part of Epping Forest. Holiday
resorts such as Southend attracted entomologists on longer visits but the bulk
of the county went unrecorded unless there was a resident collector. These
were few in number and seldom went into print. This was also the age of the
professional collector who made a living selling specimens to amateurs unable
themselves to travel much in search of rarities. Eedle and Meek, who worked
Epping Forest, published notes on their captures (partly, perhaps, for
advertisement) and it is to Harwood that we owe the section on Lepidoptera in
the VCH. The main London amateurs who visited Essex during this period
were Healy, Machin and Elisha, all first-rate microlepidopterists who treated
entomology as a science as well as hobby. The list which follows includes more
records made in the 1880s and 1890s than in any subsequent decade until the
1970s.
With the turn of the century Essex went out of fashion with visiting entom-
ologists, except that societies like the South London Entomological and
Natural History Society held periodical field meetings at well-known localities
like Warley Common, Stanford-le-Hope and South Benfleet. There was also a
general decline of interest in the microlepidoptera and the supply of records
dwindled to a mere trickle. Indeed, they came to be regarded as too difficult
and the study of the smaller species was virtually discontinued. Some
collectors, however, continued to tackle the Pyralidae, Pterophoridae and
Tortricidae, the middle-sized moths, and since I shall need to refer repeatedly
to them and their sphere of interest I have coined the words 'mesolepidopterist'
and 'mesolepidoptera' to fill the gap in our vocabulary. F.N.Pierce felt the
same need and tried out the term "Macro-microlepidopera", but this failed to
win acceptance.
After the second world war, a revolution was brought about in the study of
macrolepidoptera by the invention of the mercury-vapour light-trap. It
changed the emphasis from collecting to recording, since it is interesting to
make a list of the moths in a trap before they are liberated. Consequently an
enormous amount of data is available concerning the distribution of our larger
moths. A trap has a more limited use for the microlepidopterist since many of
the species are diurnal or crepuscular and only about a third are attracted to
light. I myself do not possess a light-trap and I do not covet one. As a
field-naturalist, I regard field-work as a more instructive and enjoyable form
of entomology. I have added another 120 species to the county list and I could
never have done that had I been a trapper. Nevertheless, a trap is a quick and
labour-saving way of recording certain species. All the traps in Essex have
been operated by macrolepidopterists except for H.C.Huggins, who was only a
mesolepidopterist but made a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the
families he covered. As far as I know, there is no one in Essex who runs a
14