Chasing Butterflies for Money 



By J. McDunnough 



MORE or less periodically a lurid 

 account crops out in the news- 

 papers to the effect that some 

 millionaire, usually a member of the 

 Rothschild family, has paid a fabulous 

 sum for a butterfly- — a sum ranging any- 

 where, according to the vividness of the 

 reporter's imagination, from five hundred 

 dollars to ten thousand dollars. The 

 effect on the average reader is either to 

 cause a sneer of pity that anyone, even 

 a millionaire, can be such a fool as to 

 part with so much money for so frail 

 and useless an object or else to create the 

 impression that it is simply necessary to 

 go out on the front porch or into the 

 back yard with a hat or broom or make- 

 shift net, knock down some unwary 

 member of the butterfly family which 

 happens to stray within reach, impale it 

 on a pin in a cardboard box and ship it 

 post haste to the aforesaid millionaire 

 in order to receive by return mail a sub- 

 stantial check. 



These newspaper tales seem to have a 

 common origin in the fact that some 

 twenty or thirty years ago an expedition 

 to one of the islands of the Malay 

 Archipelago was financed by a member 

 of the Rothschild family. One of the 

 prime objects of this expedition was to 

 secure specimens of a large butterfly of 

 a pure black color of which only a single 

 specimen was known at the time. In 

 this the collectors were perfectly success- 

 ful. Besides securing specimens of the 

 species in question, -however, the ex- 



pedition brought back a vast quantitv 

 of other material of great scientific 

 value. The total expenses were doubt- 

 less considerable, probably well above ten 

 thousand dollars; but it was not correct 

 to assert, as it was asserted at the time, 

 that this sum had been expended for a 

 single butterfly. It was not spent even for 

 specimens of a single species of butterfl\-. 

 The variety of butterflies is not as a 

 rule due to the fact that there is actually 

 a great scarcity of certain species in 

 Nature, but rather because these species 

 frequent inaccessible regions or countries. 

 Those brilliant metallic blue butterflies 

 of South America, the giant Morphos, 

 generally fly in the tree tops of almost 

 impenetrable jungles, making their cap- 

 ture on the wing very diflicult and almost 

 impossible ; today, however, collectors 

 armed with field-glasses search certain 

 trees for the caterpillars which can often 

 be secured in good numbers without any 

 more difficulty, after they are once 

 located, than that of climbing the tree 

 and cutting oft" the twig on which the 

 caterpillar rests. By confining these 

 larvae in jars or cages with a sufficient 

 supply of the food plant they undergo 

 their transformation just as well as or 

 even better than in a natfiral state. In 

 due course of time the butterfly emerges 

 and is thus secured in much more perfect 

 condition than if it had been caught on 

 the wing. As a consequence of the 

 increased supply the price of these 

 species has dropped tremendously during 



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