42 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



days than a l:)evy of Ijoarding-school misses, l)iit there was no alternative. 

 There were the dreaded females at the windows, (for it was Saturday, and 

 vacation hour,) and there was my butterfly. Sweating, blushing", inwardly 

 anathematizing my luck, I rushed past the school, only to be overwhelmed 

 with mortification by the rascally porter of the institution, who was sweep- 

 ing the pavements, and who bawled out after me : " Oh I it's no use — you 

 can't catch it I It's frightened, you're so ugly I " And now it began to 

 rise in its flight. It was plainly my last chance, for it would in a moment 

 be lost over the house tops. I made an upward leap, and by a fortunate 

 sweep of the net, succeeded finally in capturing my prize. I decided that 

 it was an Argynnis, and noted the similarity of the silvery spots to those 

 of A. Diana, of which I had several male specimens agreeing with the 

 plate in Say. Rut I was sorely puzzled. In 1863 I went North. My 

 collection followed me in 1865, after the war. I sought in vain, however, 

 for some one to name my butterfly for me. I asked the Professor of 

 Zoology in the College where I was pursuing my studies, to help me, but 

 with characteristic frankness, he answered my request by saying : " I don't 

 know anything about bugs and butterflies, and nobody else in the Faculty 

 does." Some time later, being in London, at the British Museum, I asked 

 to see the cases containing Argynnis, but my black beauty was not there 

 represented. I described it as well as I could to the gentlemanly Curator, 

 and made a rough drawing for him from memory, and received the reply : 

 " You must be mistaken, sir, in your identification of the genus. We have 

 no such Argynnis here, at all events." 



Meanwhile my collecting ceased for the time, and my collection was 

 deposited in the keeping of an Eastern institution of learning. There it 

 went the way of such things when carelessly attended to. Eighteen 

 months ago the collection was restored to me. Alas 1 for the most part in 

 the form of dust and fragments. My black beauty was an unsightly wreck 

 — a wingless, Avorm-eaten body on a pin. 



The mystery remained unsolved for me until I opened this magnificent 

 work of Mr. Edwards', and I now at last have the satisfaction of knowing 

 the name of the beautiful insect I chased down the streets of Salem more 

 than twenty years ago ; and of having the assurance that in all proba- 

 bility the specimen I impaled that July morning was the first specimen of 

 the female of Argynnis Diana ever put upon an insect pin. 



