and will be found to be most accessible when suspended by a loop
and button (or otherwise) inside the breast of the coat.

The pins here mentioned, which are an important item among
butterfly-collecting requisites, are of a peculiar manufacture--very
small-headed, long and thin, but strong. Any good London dealer will supply
them on application, or send them by post into the country.

Armed with the above simple _paraphernalia_, viz. net to catch, boxes and
pins to contain and detain, the insect hunter may sally forth on any fine
summer's day, with a pretty sure prospect of sport, and the chance, at
least, of a prize. Much depends, however, on the choice of a day, and the
nature of the locality that is to form the hunting ground.

As to weather, it must be remembered that winged insects have a great
objection to face a north, or north-east wind, during the prevalence of
which you will probably find hardly one stirring, however prolific the
locality may at other times be.

Butterflies, as a rule, do not appear to be at all {44} influenced by an
eye for the picturesque and romantic in the choice of their favourite
haunts. Often have I been disappointed in this way, finding a delicious
spot, basking in sunshine, and bedight with all manner of flowers such as a
butterfly loves, yet with scarcely a stray butterfly to enliven it; while,
on the other hand, a piece of the most unpromising flat waste land will be
all alive with insect beauty. Those, for example, who would see those
splendid creatures, the Swallow-tail butterfly and the large Copper (if
this exists with us at all now), must go to the dreary fen districts that
form their almost exclusive haunts.

It is, in fact, very hard to say what influences bring a swarm of
butterflies together, to populate one particular spot, to the utter neglect
of others close at hand, and, to all appearance, just as eligible.

Some species are most remarkable for their excessive _localness_ (as it is
called), or, limiting their range to an exceedingly small circumscribed
space; so much so, that some rare species have been known to haunt just one
corner of one particular field, year after year, while not a single
specimen could be found in all the neighbouring fields, though precisely
similar, to all appearance. This phenomenon is quite inexplicable with
regard to insects endowed so pre-eminently with locomotive powers as
butterflies are.

The local nature of his game should, howeve