igOl] SCI/DDER — My FiRST NaMESAKE. 12 1 



MY FIRST NAMESAKE. 



By Samuel H. ScrnnER. 



In the summer ot i860 I made a collecting trip to Lake Win- 

 nipeg and the lower Saskatchewan, interesting to me because so 

 far as I went I passed over the exact route taken by the Franklin 

 search party under Sir John Richardson. It will be remembered 

 that the insects collected on that occasion were published in Rich- 

 ardson's Fauna boreali-americana, by, Kirby, and I was thus the 

 better able to determine some of his species. Among the butter- 

 flies I found at the mouth of the Saskatchewan (collected with 

 incredible difficulty on account of the mosquitoes) was a delicately 

 marked and exquisitely pretty bluet unknown to me, and I sent it 

 to Mr. W. H. Edwards, then just beginning to describe new 

 American butterflies, who pronounced it new and named it Lycceiia 

 scudderii. It was the first insect named for me and has always 

 held a special place in my affection. 



Although first described from specimens brought from the 

 interior of the continent and far north, it has since been taken over 

 a wide extent of northern territory, mostly in Canada, and as far 

 east as Cape Breton ; it has been found also in a few isolated 

 localities at some distance from its known general range, as at 

 Albany. N. Y. It was on account of its occurrence at this place 

 (though it has since been recorded from New Hampshire) that I 

 introduced it in my work on the Butterflies of the Eastern United 

 States. Its early stages had been partly described by a Canadian 

 entomologist, but, unwilling to publish my work without a toler- 

 ably full account of my namesake and figures of it at every stage, 

 I determined to make a visit at the proper season to the spot near 

 Albany where it had been found, and get eggs from females en- 

 closed over lupines, and so, by rearing it, obtain its whole history. 

 The State entomologist who had first discovered it at Albany 

 kindly accompanied me to the breeding ground, and with in 

 absence from home of just twenty four hours I obtained the 

 material afterward used in my book. 



Of course the Reporters got wind ot this ; a journey of four 

 hundred miles after a butterfly's eggs was not lost upon them ! 

 They learned how many eggs I had secured a.nd; easily figuring 



