The Collector’s By-Product 
XIMENA MC GLASHAN 
Truckee, Cal. 
Present methods of collecting Lepidoptera could be improved 
just as the great packing houses have improved the meat busi- 
ness, by utilizing the by-product. Expressed differently, the 
battered and unsalable female moths and butterfles which the 
collector throws away can be made to produce more perfect 
specimens than his entire catch. Of two females of a species 
unknown to science, I prefer one that is slightly damaged to 
one which has just emerged from pupa. The latter counts one 
perfect specimen, the former probably contains fertile eggs 
and may produce hundreds of perfect specimens. 
Entomological works are strangely silent as to the utter 
simplicity and untold value of propagating Lepidoptera. They 
instruct the collector to use the net, search for eggs, larve and 
pupe, sugar for moths, use traps and visit lights, beat bushes, 
and all that, but fail to tell him that a battered female will 
nearly always lay eggs if placed in a paper bag or box. 
Edwards, Scudder and all the great authorities give minute 
descriptions of larval transformations, but fail to state that 
collectors could indefinitely multiply their output by obtaining 
eggs from each desirable variety by saving the usually dis- 
carded females. Writers of Nature books tell of the great 
difficulty they had in finding eggs of certain varieties when all 
they had to do to obtain them was to imprison a slightly worn 
female. 
A female Catocala has been known to oviposit fourteen hun- 
dred fertile eggs. The resulting adults, if propagated and 
equally prolific, would produce half a million eggs. Artificial 
propagation of fish yields such wonderful returns that it seems 
incredible that no writer has advocated the same methods in 
obtaining quantities of perfect butterflies and moths. My 
father has been my teacher, and he learned under the direct 
tuition of Harry Edwards and W. H. Edwards, forty years 
