THE LEPIDOI'TERIST 



85 



The Reminiscences of A Lepidoplerist 



B\ R. Otlolciujiii, Xci^' York, N. V. 



When 1 was about eleven years of age 1 was sent 

 to a salubrious summer resort in the pine woods of 

 Summerville, So. Carolina, to rid myself of a bad 

 cough. 1 was one day amusing myself with a net, 

 catcliing butterflies, when the Minister stopped me 

 and asked this question : "Little boy, are you catching 

 those insects just to amuse yourself, forgetting that 

 you are destroying life, or are you making a collec- 

 tion with the idea of studying a branch of Natural 

 History ?" 



I only had about a tenth of a second to come to 

 a decision, with those mild but steady eyes looking 

 straight into my brain, but 1 prom})t]y decided to 

 "study natural history." 



This purpose once aroused of course 1 captured 

 everything that came to my net, little dreaming of 

 the space that would 'be required for such a collection. 



College and the study of my profession interfered 

 somewhat with my collecting zeal but it never quite 

 died out. and after moving to New York, sometime in 

 the eighties 1 began again on a more systematic 

 scale, deciding to devote myself to lepidoptera. And 

 now we approach the moral of this little narrative. 

 It was not very long before I discovered that even 

 lepidoptera was a large lield. Hence I again limited 

 myself, this time calling it Macro-lepidoptera. Hut 

 soon s]mce compelled another elimination, and 1 pre- 

 sented Dr. Hulst with all my Geometridae, and at once 

 began to taste one of the greatest pleasures that I 

 find in collecting; viz: to give a specialist something 

 that he wants, and which 1 can easily spare without 

 hesitation. 



Aly collection grew until it fiiled one hundred large 

 drawers. Ry that time I had becon.e more especially 

 interested in moths, and desiring more cabinet room 

 disposed of my diurnals thus recovering a cal)inet of 

 twenty drawers. 



From then on, while devoting mvself to the ac- 



