after him. (No doubt he would grow pink and pretend not to hear, going on with head high.) But now nobody noticed the net, and wherever one went one found someone with whom to exchange information and specimens—or, should one say swop confidences and corpses?
Yes, there were fewer lepidoptera than formerly. The common things that nobody wanted would always abound, but undoubtedly the time was not far off when the rarer kinds would be worked out. He announced the approach of this frightful catastrophe with the absolute certitude of Jonah crying the destruction of Nineveh, but without any visible emotion. Yet there was a certain sadness in his voice, as if he contemplated the disappearance from England of those rarer kinds regretfully (for the good hunting), but fortified by the knowledge that he would be in at the death. Though every moth should become extinct, nothing could ever rob him of the memory of, for example, fifteen Red Underwings slain on a July night in the year now current.
The fact was, he went on, that nobody was content with the number they had of any given insect. It was always possible to make a series more complete, whether by more perfect individuals, or by a wider range of variety. The Silver Washed Fritillary, now. There was a butterfly, now, that was
