%\t Canadian (fetawologfei 



VOL. XII. LONDON, ONT., JANUARY, 1880. No. 1 



NATURE-PRINTED BUTTERFLIES. 



BY JAMES FLETCHER, OTTAWA, ONT. 



The season of* warm days, flowers and butterflies is over now, and the 

 look-out is cold, bleak and bare. Apparently there is little for the scien- 

 tific lover of nature to do in the way of collections at this time of year ; 

 such, however, is far from being actually the case, as all who have 

 collected will testify. It is, in fact, one of the busiest seasons for 

 collectors ; all the treasures gathered during the summer months have to 

 be gone through. In the first place, those known have to be taken out 

 and sorted away into their proper places in the cabinet ; the remainder 

 then have to be re-sorted and divided up into sets according to the 

 families to which they appear to belong, and after this they have to be 

 examined critically, and, if possible, identified. It frequently happens 

 that a collector of butterflies has an opportunity of capturing a large 

 number of some local species in one day, and finds it impossible or irk- 

 some to set them all before they become too dry, as they will in a very 

 short time in hot weather. When they are once dry, too, one is apt to 

 think that as they can get no worse, they may safely be put aside until 

 some more convenient occasion, to be relaxed and set up ; but this con- 

 venient occasion, like a good many others, is sometimes very long coming 

 and many valuable specimens are consequently thus lost. 



An accident which occurred to the glass of one of the drawers of my 

 butterfly cabinet lately, was the means of reminding me of a process 

 shown me some years ago by a Captain Lloyd, .of the English Navy. " The 

 accident^referred to was the breaking of the cover of one of my cases 

 which contained some rare butterflies, in consequence of which it was 

 impossible to close the door of the cabinet tightly. My horror can be 

 better imagined than expressed when, upon opening the door and pulling 

 out this drawer, about a fortnight afterwards, I found that there was not a 

 ^single perfect specimen in it ; a mouse had got. in, and what was once a 



