April, 1915 Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society 41 



y 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE BROOKLYN ENTOMOLOGICAL 



SOCIETY. 



The regular meeting was held at 185 Brooklyn Ave., November 12, 1914, 

 with president Davis, thirteen members and five visitors present, the latter 

 including Dr. W. T. M. Forbes, Chas. Scott, a member of the Society 

 thirty years ago, and Dr. Vitor, well known from the monthly records 

 he has prepared for many years of the birds visiting Prospect Park. 



Harrison Tietz, 249 Johnson Ave., Richmond Hill, was unanimously 

 elected an active member. 



Mr. Weeks showed a live Cychrus elevatus taken from his cellar in 

 Yaphank, Nov. 12, and reported Leucania unipuncta flying in the warm 

 evening of November 11. He also spoke of turning up nests of the 

 yellow jacket, probably Vespa vulgaris, in- his fall ploughing. Some of 

 these nests were placed on the ground under inverted pails. The busy 

 wasps lost no time in digging in the soil and reburying their nests. 



Mr. Dow spoke of the new Museum and the active societies of young 

 naturalists in Los Angeles, Cal., and asked members to bring to the next 

 meeting pupae and cocoons of our familiar Lepidoptera for the encourage- 

 ment and experimental efforts of our Pacific Coast friends. 



Mr. Torre-Bueno exhibited a box containing the eleven species of 

 Veliinae found east of the Mississippi River, one still with manuscript 

 name. Six of the species are in our local fauna. A synoptical table of 

 the three genera and all the species is to be published. 



Mr. Dow read a paper entitled : The Five Thousand Dollar Butterfly. 

 It spoke of the popular idea existing for at least a century throughout 

 Europe and this country that there is at least one butterfly which any one 

 might catch and for which some collector is anxiously waiting and willing 

 to pay $5,000. A few years ago a newspaper published a story that the 

 United States National Museum had paid $20,000 for a single fly. The 

 myth of the $S,ooo butterfly was printed less than a year ago in a magazine 

 devoted to general science. For twenty years reports have been frequently 

 published that an English collector was willing to pay $1,000 to $5,000 for 

 a particular species of flea supposed to inhabit the fur of the arctic fox. 

 Such stories have made endless trouble for all the large museums, since 

 many thousands of persons have called or written claiming $5,000 for some 

 specimen, generally not worth five cents. A flea new to science, taken 

 from some very rare animal, might fetch $5, if the purchasing collector 

 happened to be in particularly good humor. In former years unique but- 

 terflies have fetched $1,000 and even more, but their total can be counted 

 on one's fingers. Nowadays it is doubtful whether a hundred specimens 

 a year can be taken in this country which would fetch $5 a piece. Only 

 an expert could detect such a one. For the untrained, or even the average 

 collector, there is little cash market, not enough to make the effort really 

 worth while. One of our best known professional collectors wrote not 

 long ago that he could barely average $5 a week, the year round. 



