DRAI.KItS AND STEALERS. 93 



collector of certain interesting Geometers, but the man who invades 

 the ranks of the amateur sportsmen and turns their wants and their 

 generosity to his own profit. 



The communication made by Mr. Keays to the February number of 

 the Record and Mr. Tutt's comments thereupon, bear ample testimony 

 to the fact, not only that the " carjDet-bagger " exists, but that he exists 

 to such an extent as to be a positive nuisance. Sometimes he conducts 

 his exchange business from a suburban address, operating on the 

 credulity of correspondents with a drawer or two full of reputed 

 " Britishers " picked uji at a mixed sale. More often he does not even 

 trouble to buy liis l)ogus rarities at all, ]iut sends his cigar-boxes 

 (empty) to too confiding distributors, .and converts wliatever he may 

 receive to his own commercial uses. It is quite conceivable that a very 

 decent caliinetful might be got together in this way, and then handed 

 over to the auctioneer spiced with innocent little locality labels and 

 augmented with reset " foreigners "" selected from a dubious miscellany 

 of Continental envelopes. I do not say that this has lieen done, I hope 

 it has not ; but that such a thing is possible, the curious " Tutt " 

 la])els in tlie Burney collection testify ; and, as the older generation of 

 entomologists i)asses away, the possibiHt}' of similar frauds will, unless 

 some safeguard is devised, be augmented a hundred-fold. What could 

 be easier, for instance, than for an unscrupulous vendor to dujae the 

 unsuspecting purchaser by aflfixing to his precious insects such labels 

 as " from Mr. Doubleday," or " froni Mr. Stainton," with further data 

 of the captui'e of the specimens in this or that locality where the rarity 

 has been known to exist ? 



So far as I am aware, we have only one solitary macro tliat defies 

 reproduction ad libitum — the one-time indigenous Chn/sophanus disjjar. 

 This beautiful butterfly may consequently be bought or exchanged 

 with impunity. But it stands alone, and all the liost of Continental 

 Heterocera, to say nothing of " Kentisli "' P. daplidice, A. Jatlionia, et 

 hoc genna omne, afford ample consolation to the " carpet-bagger " in 

 search of i)ence and specimens. It may be objected that the maxim, 

 caveat emjitor, applies to entomological as much as to any other com- 

 mercial transactions. Very well I Init how is a purchaser living, say 

 in Limerick, to ascertain the bona-fides of a correspondent in Canter- 

 bury, especially when the said correspondent has gone to the trouble 

 of sending a circumstantial account of his captures to a recognized 

 entomological magazine ? Such proceedings break down the safe-guard 

 of published records, on which, in ray opinion, too much reliance is 

 Avont to l)e placed. My reason for this opinion is as follows : — Numbers 

 of reports appear in our newsimpers every year ; some of these are sent 

 l)y gentlemen who write, as unversed in entomological lore, to local 

 papers to annoiuice that tliey are convinced that tliey have (any time 

 betAveen March and ( )ctober) seen the celebrated Camberwell Beauty 

 in tlieir Ijack garden ; others come from experienced observers Avho 

 have compiled careful lists of captures and observations in some chosen 

 sj)0t. BctAveen tliese extremes, there are uncpiestionably a number of 

 Avell-meaning collectors wliose knowledge of identity is about on a par 

 with their scientific information ; in their eyes certain common species 

 often do duty for allied l)ut much rarer members of the same genera ; 

 whilst, rice rersa, the rarity may fail to be differentiated from its 

 common congener — a mistake, by the way, to which many advanced 



