It began years and years ago, with a revision of the Microlepidoptera (whatever these may be) by Pawkins, in which he extinguished a new species created by Hapley.  Hapley, who was always quarrelsome, replied by a stinging impeachment of the entire classification of Pawkins.[A] Pawkins in his “Rejoinder"[B] suggested that Hapley’s microscope was as defective as his power of observation, and called him an “irresponsible meddler”—­ Hapley was not a professor at that time.  Hapley in his retort,[C] spoke of “blundering collectors,” and described, as if inadvertently, Pawkins’ revision as a “miracle of ineptitude.”  It was war to the knife.  However, it would scarcely interest the reader to detail how these two great men quarrelled, and how the split between them widened until from the Microlepidoptera they were at war upon every open question in entomology.  There were memorable occasions.  At times the Royal Entomological Society meetings resembled nothing so much as the Chamber of Deputies.  On the whole, I fancy Pawkins was nearer the truth than Hapley.  But Hapley was skilful with his rhetoric, had a turn for ridicule rare in a scientific man, was endowed with vast energy, and had a fine sense of injury in the matter of the extinguished species; while Pawkins was a man of dull presence, prosy of speech, in shape not unlike a water-barrel, over conscientious with testimonials, and suspected of jobbing museum appointments.  So the young men gathered round Hapley and applauded him.  It was a long struggle, vicious from the beginning and growing at last to pitiless antagonism.  The successive turns of fortune, now an advantage to one side and now to another—­now Hapley tormented by some success of Pawkins, and now Pawkins outshone by Hapley, belong rather to the history of entomology than to this story.

[Footnote A:  “Remarks on a Recent Revision of Microlepidoptera.” Quart.  Journ.  Entomological Soc., 1863.]

[Footnote B:  “Rejoinder to certain Remarks,” etc. Ibid. 1864.]

[Footnote C:  “Further Remarks,” etc. Ibid.]

But in 1891 Pawkins, whose health had been bad for some time, published some work upon the “mesoblast” of the Death’s Head Moth.  What the mesoblast of the Death’s Head Moth may be does not matter a rap in this story.  But the work was far below his usual standard, and gave Hapley an opening he had coveted for years.  He must have worked night and day to make the most of his advantage.

In an elaborate critique he rent Pawkins to tatters—­one can fancy the man’s disordered black hair, and his queer dark eyes flashing as he went for his antagonist—­and Pawkins made a reply, halting, ineffectual, with painful gaps of silence, and yet malignant.  There was no mistaking his will to wound Hapley, nor his incapacity to do it.  But few of those who heard him—­I was absent from that meeting—­realised how ill the man was.