Essex records, but both regularly contributed well-written, informative notes
to the journals.
Alfred Thurnall was an entomologist of outstanding merit. He lived at
Stratford from 1885-1902. He then moved to Surrey but returned to Essex in
1909 and lived at Wanstead until his death in 1929. By profession he was a
draughtsman employed by the London and South-eastern Railway, and it may
have been this that enabled him to travel more widely on collecting expeditions
than his contemporaries. He became the leading authority of his generation on
the Tortricidae and also collected the Pyralidae; his collection, beautifully
preserved, is in the Passmore Edwards Museum and is one of the most im-
pressive I have ever studied. His series are commendably short and culled from
a wide range of localities; his determinations are made with scholarly accuracy
and his data labels are among the most informative I have ever encountered.
His list (Thurnall, 1902) is one of my most important sources. He did not
confine himself entirely to the mesolepidoptera; he wrote notes for the journals
on the smaller moths and some specimens of these are in the British Museum
(Natural History).
The Revd C.R.N.Burrows (Firmin et al., 1975:13) was the vicar successively
of Rainham, Brentwood and Mucking. He was a macrolepidopterist who did
little more than dabble in the microlepidoptera apart from the Psychidae (then
regarded as 'macros'), on which he became an authority. Work on the genitalia
of the Geometridae brought him into contact with F.N.Pierce, on whose
suggestion he collected numerous microlepidoptera at Mucking in 1916 and
1917 which he then passed to Pierce for identification. The result was an
impressive list (Pierce, 1918), comprising over 170 species. These included
Parornix finitimella, then first recognised as British, and three other species not
otherwise recorded in Essex. The specimens are in the Pierce collection at the
Liverpool Museum, but others, taken previously, are in the Purdey collection
and the Psychidae are with his macrolepidoptera in the British Museum
(Natural History). Burrows also wrote a diary covering the years 1884-1902
which was lent to me by Mr J.Firmin. It contains little other than lists of
specimens, nearly all 'macros', taken from day to day and hastily written down
as a personal aide-memoire. As happens in such jottings, slips of spelling
occur, especially amongst the 'micros' with which he was unfamiliar; con-
sequently several potentially interesting but ambiguous records have had to be
discarded. Apart from the lists of species, he names visiting preachers and gives
his own pulpit fixtures which generally ended up in entomology. There is only
one personal note: "26th June, 1902. Coronation headache".
Howard Vaughan was a leading lepidopterist in the second half of the
nineteenth century. He was a regular visitor to Leigh-on-Sea for which he
wrote a list (Vaughan, 1889) which includes the mesolepidoptera. However, ne
is overshadowed by F.G. Whittle whose work covered the whole of the micro-
lepidoptera and who lived and recorded in the Southend district for 30 years. In
addition to his main list for south-east Essex (Whittle, 1899a), he published
records of his captures almost annually. He was a tireless field worker who
did most of his collecting expeditions on his bicycle. As a result of his energy
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