298 tHk entomologist's record. 



The Destruction of Insects. 



By HAEOLD HODGE, M.A. 



I have often wondered why so many collectors of insects should be 

 so ambitious of emulating Keating. Why do they devote themselves 

 so keenly to fulfilling the functions of a fly-paper? Jf they do not 

 cry themselves through the streets as first-class killers of all flies, 

 bugs, and beetles, they are certainly not less persistent and successful 

 at "catching 'em all alive." Many of them seem seriously to think 

 that the raisD)! (Fetre of an insect is to be caught, and the raison d'etre 

 of a man to catch it. No wonder that the world should come to 

 the conclusion that these creatures are not men, and regard them as 

 lunatics, harmless so long as their destructive mania does not extend 

 to anything more important than butterflies. But to the educated 

 man with some feeling for nature and some sense of beauty, they are 

 an object of active dislike. He sees them industriously labouring to 

 diminish one of the charms of the country ; and his indignation is 

 not lessened when he finds these destroyers dubbing themselves 

 naturalists because they have impaled their victims on pins, and 

 talking complacently of science when they are able to refer to some 

 familiar butterfly by a Latin word, which they do not understand, and 

 usually cannot pronounce without perpetrating some hideous false 

 quantity. He sees clearly enough that the truth about these people 

 is not that they do care for science or study natural history, but 

 that they do not care for nature and are destitute of all aesthetic sense. 

 He accordingly contemns them, and votes entomologists and 

 entomology a fraud. 



This may seem a foolish and superficial conclusion to us who 

 know better, but if we will be honest and look at the matter from an 

 outside point of view, we must admit that such a generalisation, 

 although erroneous, is very natural, and that there is much in the 

 conduct of collectors to justify it. I do not hesitate to say from my 

 own experience that there are many who take no interest whatever 

 in insects except as specimens to be captured and placed ; who can see 

 nothing in a butterfly in the field. We have an evidence of this in 

 the small proportion of observations on insects as they live, to records 

 of captures and disputes as to names in our entomological journals. 

 These people are willing to destroy any number of insects in the hope 

 of discovering and possessing themselves of a single abnormity. I 

 have seen them on the look-out for " vars." of Lycaena icarux 

 callously insisting on destroying a captive, on the ground that they 

 could not properly examine it alive. There are others to whom it is 

 an irresistible pleasure merely to get possession of any insect they see 

 alive ; they accordingly take hundreds more than they want of the 

 commonest species. 



It is this kind of thing, this itching to collect for its own sake on 

 the one hand, and the tendency to study insects in the cabinet rather 

 than in the field, on the other, that I deprecate. 



There are two special aspects of this subject : the taking of insect 

 life for the purposes of scientific discovery, and the destruction of 

 rare and local species. The former, of course, is on a different plane 

 from anything we have yet been considering. True scientific 

 experiment must have the material required to the extent to which it 



