INSECTS
If Lancashire maintains a smaller part of the total number of British insects than do several English counties of lesser area, we may attribute such a paucity more to its geographical position in the north-west than to natural condition of surface or environment, for these indeed in Lancashire are most varied. We have mountains, moorlands, extensive mosses and wide belts of littoral sand dunes—all of which suit and protect their exclusive fauna—the only distinct natural feature that is wanting being extensive and ancient forest land. There are however many detached woods, both of recent origin and of the earlier more primitive growths of birch and fir on the mosses or bogs of the southern part of the county. In fact, but few English counties excel Lancashire in diversity of natural conditions, and although in few counties have such conditions been more altered and indeed obliterated than they have in south-west Lancashire, still large tracts in the north and north-east remain untouched by the hand of man, and are populated by a fauna probably unaltered since it was first established there.
Before proceeding in detail to an enumeration of the insects which have so far been recorded from Lancashire, a few words may not be out of place on the local students of the order and the special localities whence most of our information of the occurrence of its members is derived.
LANCASHIRE ENTOMOLOGISTS
No account of the Insecta of Lancashire would be complete without some reference to the band of workers who have done so much in the past to explore the county entomologically, and to whose efforts is due to a great extent our knowledge of its fauna.
Most of these men have now passed away—the school of Lancashire working men entomologists especially seems to have left no descendants. For in the early years of the last century this county was distinguished by a group of self-taught naturalists, who, born for the most part in quite humble circumstances, without education, and denied all the assistances to self-education now so abundant in our large towns, living obscure and toilsome lives, were yet inspired by an innate and ineradicable love of nature.
These men belonged principally to the large manufacturing towns of the south of the county, and in days before factory acts and cheap railway excursions their scant leisure was employed in assiduous collecting and expeditions to distant parts of the county on foot, almost incredible to the modern collector.
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