THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 127 
Some Remarks on Collecting and Collectors. By 
W. Arnocp Lewis, F.L.S. 
(Entom. viii, 103.) 
Likk others of your readers I take an interest in the 
subject which Mr. H. R. Cox has descanted upon in the last 
number of the ‘Entomologist, and with your permission I 
will write down some reflections which have suggested 
themselves to me in a collector’s experience of several 
years. 
I can confirm Mr. Cox’s reference to “the good old free 
spirit of collecting.” Free enough, in all conscience, that 
collecting was. 1 have myself spoken with a gentleman who 
in one year captured on the south coast eight hundred 
specimens of Colias Hyale, and I recollect that he boasted 
roundly of the exploit! The same once informed me, 
when | was in search of the second brood of Leucophasia 
Sinapis, that I need not expect again to see that insect in 
the neighbourhood, because he had that season taken the 
whole spring brood. It is possible that your correspondent 
has himself heard of these incidents, or others like them; 
and on these facts I should wish to make one or two 
remarks. 
Anyone who captures eight hundred butterflies of one 
kind, when his own collection receives perhaps four-and- 
twenty, must have a very distinct mofive. Mr. Cox speaks 
most truly when he hints that “the pleasure of entomological 
rambles” could have little to do with such a feat. What 
pleasure, in truth, could come from taking the lives of eight 
hundred defenceless Hyale? After the capture of, let us say, 
the first one hundred and fifty, sensations of ‘ pleasure” 
must have begun to give way to physical fatigue. In 
Mr. Cox’s expressive words, the object was once “ principally 
a day’s innocent pleasure, and not so much with a view to 
amassing a large number of specimens in the shortest 
possible time.” But certainly in the case of the eight 
bundred, “amassing the large number” must have remained 
the motive long after pleasure, innocent or not, had left the 
scene. Setting out eight hundred butterflies must be a very 
tiresome business, and probably no other collector has expe- 
rience of the labour it entails ; seven hundred and seventy-six 
