Sabine Baring-Gould

“ Above Greenhythe the chalk hills are much honeycombed with quarries, and huge kilns smoke perpetually, resolving the chalk into cement. Further inland the hills are covered with trees, and form that region so dear to naturalists—Darenth Wood. Now to one unfamiliar with the district, who first traverses Darenth Wood, the trees are calculated to excite surprise, for every other is patched with a viscous, sweet, and dark substance, and he will stop and say, ‘What is the matter with these trees? ”

“ There was a fourth, an owner of large strawberry fields, from which he supplied the London market; a sleepy man who took long to make up his mind. She bewildered him with her learned talk about lepidoptera, and became silent when he ought to have spoken, and no touches at last brought any quiver in his heart, or sound out of him. ”

“ Darenth Wood is famous for the rare lepidoptera caught in it, and it is for the Noctuina group that the collectors hunt here. They spread treacle and beer, mixed, on the trunks of the trees, and catch the moths that are attracted by the mixture. There are as many as three hundred British species of Noctuina alone. Then there are the Bombycidæ, which are not caught by treacle. The collectors hatch out a female and place her on a tree, when numerous males of the species gather about her. ”

“ If she had had only her father’s little wage to dress on, she could not have adorned herself with such good clothes as those she affected; but Jessie Mullins had a subsidiary source of income—she herself collected and sold moths and butterflies, and she provided tea and supper for naturalists coming to Darenth Wood for lepidoptera. ”