It sat upon a larch-trunk, resting perhaps after its long journey and awaiting its predestined captors; and we caught it with the aid of our prep-school master, Mr Chorlton, who had a holiday cottage on the roadside between Elmbury and Brensham. This great man, who made us love Latin and Greek, had played cricket for Oxford and Somerset, had written a learned commentary on the plays of Aeschylus, now drank regularly a bottle of port each night after dinner and collected butterflies and moths with the enthusiasm of a schoolboy. Brensham was his favourite hunting-ground, and this in our eyes added to its glory. One hot, still night in late August he took us up to the larch plantation and taught us the game of ‘sugaring’ for moths. Half an hour before, in the kitchen of his small cottage, we had assisted at the ceremony of preparing the ‘sugar’. Mr Chorlton took off his coat and solemnly mixed the ingredients in a saucepan to the accompaniment of a running commentary which, like all his talk, was as full of quotations as a Christmas pudding of plums. ‘First, black treacle made by Mr Fowler. Not the same one who wrote English Usage, perhaps, but a great man all the same: he makes thundering good treacle. Sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes or Cytherea’s breath. Now we add some brown Barbados sugar, which I understand you brats call Niggers’ Toes. You know where Barbados is? It’s one of the smaller islands in the West Indies. When the news of the outbreak of war reached Barbados in 1914 its legislature immediately cabled to Whitehall: “Get to it, England; Barbados is with you.” A stout-hearted little island; no wonder it produces such excellent sugar. Now we stir the mixture. Double, double, toil and trouble, Fire, burn, and cauldron bubble. Smell it. Taste it if you like. Isn’t it good? Isn’t it a feast fit for an Oleander Hawk Moth or a Glifden Nonpareil? But just you wait. We pour it off into a tin; and now Monsieur Chorlton the great chef completes his pièce de résistance. One or two drops, see, of Old Jamaica rum. Nothing to beat it. Nor poppy nor mandragora nor all the drowsy syrups of the world. Now smell it! That’s the stuff that makes the sailors sing. That’s the stuff that won the Battle of Trafalgar. Yo, ho, and a bottle of rum!’

Then Mr Chorlton gathered up his net, his lantern and his killing-bottle and we set off up the hill. It was dark when we got to the plantation; the rabbits which scampered away from our steps were disembodied white scuts, the first owls were calling, the bats squeaked as they chased flies. Mr Chorlton took a paintbrush out of his satchel and proceeded to smear the treacly mixture on the tree-trunks. You could smell the rum a dozen yards away. ‘That ought to fetch ‘em,’ he said. ‘One of the most endearing things about moths is that there are precious few damned teetotallers amongst ‘em!’

When he’d finished painting the trees he lit a pipe and we waited beside the stile while the dusk deepened. It was tremendously exciting; for it was the first time we had ever been in the woods at night.