On an old May Day (May 12) I was at Bretforton Manor playing tennis and shooting rooks. About 10.30 p.m. the cart and Taffy were brought round; I had all my things in and was about to mount when, the pony fidgeting to be off, my friend's groom caught at the rein, but he had omitted to buckle it on one side of the bit. In an instant pony and trap had disappeared, and the man was lying in the drive with a broken leg. We had to carry him home on a door, and then went in search of the pony, expecting every moment to find it and the trap in a ditch; about half a mile from Aldington we met my own man who had come in search of my remains. He told us that the pony and trap were quite safe and uninjured. The clever animal had trotted the whole distance, over two miles, with the reins dragging behind him, taken the turning from the highroad, and again at my gate, and pulled up in front of the house, where someone passing saw him and brought my man out to the rescue. CHAPTER XXIII. BUTTERFLIES--MOTHS--WASPS. "How like a rainbow, sparkling as a dewdrop, Glittering as gold, and lively as a swallow, Each left his grave-shroud and in rapture winged him Up to the heavens." --ANON. I have always been fascinated by the beauty of butterflies and moths, and I think I began collecting when I was about eleven, as I remember having a net when I was at school at Rottingdean. My first exciting capture was a small tortoiseshell, and I was much disappointed when I discovered that it was quite a common insect. In 1917 some nettles here were black with the larvæ of this species, but I think they must have been nearly all visited by the ichneumons, which pierce the skin, laying their eggs in the living body of the larva, as the butterflies were not specially common later. I was, however, fortunate in identifying a specimen of the curious variety figured in Newman's _British Butterflies_, variety 2, from one in Mr. Bond's collection; it has a dark band crossing the middle of the upper wings, but, though interesting, it is not so handsome as the type. I did not catch this specimen, as I do not like killing butterflies now, but I had ample leisure to observe it quite closely on the haulm of potatoes. It was decidedly smaller than the type. 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 larvæ, feeding in autumn on privet in the hedges.