The old garden at Aldington in the repose of a June evening was a place of fragrant joy from honeysuckle on poles and arches, and just as the light was fading the huge privet hawk-moths, with quivering wings and extended probosces, used to sip the honey from the long blossoms. I could catch them in a net, but these specimens were nearly all damaged from their energetic flight among the flowers, and perfect ones are easy to rear from the larvae, feeding in autumn on privet in the hedges.
Later in the summer the Ghost Swift appeared about twilight, the white colour of the male making it very conspicuous. Twilight at Aldington is called “owl light,” and moths of all kinds are “bob-owlets,” from their uneven flight when trying to evade the owls in pursuit. We often see these birds “hawking” at nightfall in my meadows round the edge of the Forest after moths.
The martagon lily flourished in the Aldington garden, and when they were blooming the overpowering scent was particularly attractive to moths of the Plusia genus, including the Burnished Brass, the Golden Y, and the Beautiful Golden Y, all exhibiting very distinctive markings of burnished gold; and other Noctuae in great variety. The latter are best taken by “sugaring”—painting patches of mixed beer and sugar on a series of tree trunks, and making several rounds at twilight with a lantern and a cyanide bottle. We had a sugaring range of about seventy pollard withies by the brook side, and being well sheltered, it was such a favourite place for moths, that it was often difficult to select from each patch, swarming with sixty or seventy specimens, those really worth taking. At sugaring moths are found in a locality where they are never seen at other times, and rarities occur quite unexpectedly. I took some specimens of Cymatophora ocularis (figure of 80). Newman says: “It is always esteemed a rarity,” and mentions Worcester as a locality. Mamestra abjecta was quite a common catch, of which Newman writes:
“It seems to be very local, and so imperfectly known that the recorded habitats must be received with great doubt; it is certainly abundant on the banks of the Thames, near Gravesend, and also on the Irish coast, near Waterford.”
The marks of sugaring remain on tree trunks for many years. I lately saw the faint remains on about