Many moons ago I went through Turner's Lepidoptera of Somerset and typed into a then new 'computer' all of his descriptions for the macro moths. This was the last published account of the moths in this area (1955) and I was interested in comparing his descriptions with status today. Each species had a simple one-line account like "Very common in most parts, but curiously scarce in some parts." - or "Scarce and local, often in marshy places."
Unfortunately, over the years this project was overtaken by other events, and the files became lost.
Recently I have been thinking how useful this would be now but couldn't bring myself to go through all that typing again! So, I was very pleased to find, whilst rummaging through some 'boxes of stuff' last night, old backup disks with all this preserved.
It would be good to make this available in a planned species accounts feature on this website. Like a '50-years ago' thing. Maybe I need to check the copyright issues first.
Title page from Turner (1955).
Turner1 is now out of print but still comes up occasionally.
That shown is J M Chalmers-Hunt's annotated copy.
1. Turner A. H., Lepidoptera of Somerset, published by the Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, Taunton, 1955.