My dear Will,—­The ceremony is over, very comfortably.  I am duly “invested,” and have got two engrossed documents, both signed by the King, one appointing me a member of the “Order of Merit” with all sorts of official and legal phrases, the other a dispensation from being personally “invested” by the King—­as Col.  Legge explained, to safeguard me as having a right to the Order in case anybody says I was not “invested.” ...  Colonel Legge was a very pleasant, jolly kind of man, and he told us he was in attendance on the German Emperor when he was staying near Christchurch last summer, and went for many drives with the Emperor only, all about the country....  Col.  Legge got here at 2.40, and had to leave at 3.20 (at station), so we got a carriage from Wimborne to meet the train and take him back, and Ma gave him some tea, and he said he had got a nice little place at Stoke Poges but with no view like ours, and he showed me how to wear the Order and was very pleasant:  and we were all pleased....

The next letter refers to the discovery of a rare moth and some beetles in the root of an orchid.  It was certainly a strange yet pleasant coincidence that these creatures should find themselves in Dr. Wallace’s greenhouse, where alone they would be noticed and appreciated as something uncommon.

* * * * *

TO MR. W.G.  WALLACE

Old Orchard, Broadstone, Wimborne.  February 23, 1909.

My dear Will,—­ ...  In my last letter I did not say anything about my morning at the Nat.  Hist.  Museum....  What I enjoyed most was seeing some splendid New Guinea butterflies which Mr. Rothschild[46] and his curator, Mr. Jordan, brought up from Tring on purpose to show me.  I could hardly have imagined anything so splendid as some of these.  I also saw some of the new paradise birds in the British Museum.  But Mr. Rothschild says they have five times as many at Tring, and much finer specimens, and he invited me to spend a week-end at Tring and see the Museum.  So I may go, perhaps—­in the summer.

But I have a curious thing to tell you about insect collecting at “Old Orchard.”  About five months back I was examining one of the clumps of an orchid in the glass case—­which had been sent me from Buenos Ayres by Mr. John Hall—­when three pretty little beetles dropped out of it, on the edge of the tank, and I only managed to catch two of them.  They were pretty little Longicornes, about an inch long, but very slender and graceful, though only of a yellowish-brown colour.  I sent them up to the British Museum asking the name, and telling them they could keep them if of any use.  They told me they were a species of the large South American genus Ibidion, but they had not got it in the collection!

On the Sunday before Christmas Day I was taking my evening inspection of the orchids, etc., in the glass case when a largish insect flew by my face, and when it settled it looked like a handsome moth or butterfly.  It was brilliant orange on the lower wings, the upper being shaded orange brown, very moth-like, but the antennae were clubbed like a butterfly’s.  At first I thought it was a butterfly that mimicked a moth, but I had never seen anything like it before.