10 THK KNTOJIOLOGIST S RECORD. 



Certainly a large percentage of the visitors this year might be seen 

 taking their before-time aimless constitutional along the main road 

 leading from the Grand Hotel, armed with green gauze nets, that had 

 the tell-tale shape and stiffness betraying their recent acquirement from 

 the dealers. Not only were these well-meaning individuals armed with 

 this customary engine of warfare against the butterflies, but they usually 

 saw fit to load themselves with a complete cargo of entomological 

 apparatus ; and I have often smiled to myself on meeting some ple- 

 thoric old gentleman or grey-ringleted old lady simply hung over with 

 cyanide bottles and pin-cushions, pill-boxes and forceps, lenses and 

 larva-tins, and all the other impedimenta that an entomologically- 

 inclined tourist could collect together. My own life at this time 

 became somewhat of a burden to me, for during my visit to Orotava in 

 the spring, when the young collector's fancy lightly turns to thoughts 

 of butterflies, I used to be pestered by visitors in the hotel consulting 

 me on various matters that caused them perplexity in their new study. 

 On one occasion it Avas a fat old matron, who waylaid me on the stairs 

 of the hotel as I was coming down to dinner. Laying a plump detain- 

 ing hand upon my arm, she made the polite request that I would lend 

 her " pins — real butterfly pins — to pin my captures with. I have used 

 up all my darning needles" — this last as a plaintive appeal to my 

 sympathy and compassionate pity. Poor lady, pity did indeed largely 

 enter into the feeling with which, later in the evening, I regarded her 

 collection. The result of two weeks' assiduous pursuit consisted of 

 some 30 or 40 butterflies and moths, mutilated and worn specimens 

 mostly, with wings set all awry at various angles, and (0 shade of 

 Doubleday !) a darning needle the size and thickness of a hedge-stake 

 impaling the head, and another needle stuck through the abdomen of 

 a Chrysophanus pJdoeas. 



On another occasion it was a nice old gentleman, all bald head and 

 heavy gold watch chain, who had been bitten by the mania for 

 collecting. He rushed at me in the hall one day, in great excitement, 

 and begged me to go to his room to view his caterpillars. " Larvae, I 

 should say, sir, larvae ; they all perspire and then die." So I went 

 with him to examine into this strange larval sweating sickness. 

 When I did see his "breeding cage" (save the mark!), I was not 

 surprised. He had eight or nine larvae of DeilepMla euphorbiae tightly 

 bottled in a small medicine bottle, along with a few withered leaves of 

 the euphorbia plant. I am afraid I was a little outspoken in my 

 remarks, forgetting for the moment that he was an old man and I a 

 young one, but it really beat me how anyone of his age and presumable 

 intelligence could expect caterpillars to live and thrive in such a 

 receptacle — a tightly-corked medicine bottle, reeking still of its original 

 contents, not even then entirely dispensed, for I saw some drops of 

 mixture, paregoric or cough-easer, in the bottom of the bottle. From the 

 bruised appearance of the caterpillars I concluded that they had, like the 

 medicine, been well shaken, not before however, but after taken. I 

 pointed out to him that hivxie of D. enphorhiae were not at all easy to rear 

 in captivity, and that they needed plenty of fresh air and sunlight, and 

 earth at the bottom of the breeding cage, in which to pupate, as they 

 were a subterranean species. 



But it is not the purpose of this paper to recount the extraordinary 

 blunders of amateur entomologists who visit the Canaries, though 

 many amusing reminiscences crowd upon me. 



