EPPING FOREST
THE ENTOMOLOGIST IN THE FOREST
By W. Cole
'' O happy living things ! no tongue
Their beauty may declare."
As a locality for insects, Epping Forest suffers from
at least two disadvantages—proximity to a great
city with its smoke and teeming population, and
the nature of most of the soil. The cold London
Clay comes to the surface over by far the greater
part of the district, and although patches of gravel
appear in places, there are but few of the warm,
bosky, sandy spots which flowers and insects so
greatly love. A factor also to be reckoned with,
to the sorrow of the ornithologist as well as of the
entomologist, is the almost complete effacement
by game-preservers of the raptorial birds, and
the consequent undue abundance of the insect-
destroying groups. Whatever theories may be
advanced as to the effect of the attacks of
insectivorous birds in controlling or enhancing
the plague of certain kinds of caterpillars, there
can be little doubt that pupa; which are laid up
for the winter near the surface of the ground, or
on palings, branches and trunks of trees, are
destroyed to an extent which can only be truly
appreciated by watching a tit or a creeper
systematically clearing such nestling-places of their
insect lodgers. Yet in spite of these drawbacks,
Epping Forest has for years provided a happy
hunting-ground for generations of entomologists,
and the results of their researches, extant in