1875-1876.] 187 



Preston, jun., Dunmore, Belfast. I believe that were the collecting 

 of Lepidoptera taken up intelligently and enthusiastically by some 

 of the younger members of the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club, 

 one hundred species might be added to those which are found 

 in my collection. The Coupty Antrim, with many rich localities, 

 has been quite unexplored by me; the whole basin of Lough 

 Neagh, rich in flora and in birds, must from analogy be rich in 

 insect life, and that remains, so far as I am concerned, a " terra 

 incognita." I exhibit of butterflies, 30 species; of sphinges, 14; 

 of other moths 284, making a total of 314 species, and no® 

 specimens, and these are only the Macro-lepidoptera ; the Pyrales, 

 Plumes, Tineidae, Tortricidse, and Veneers, far more in number, 

 and in the exquisite beauty of their minute perfections by far excel- 

 ling their larger brethren, still remain to be investigated with ever 

 increasing delight and admiration. 



Ignorance of the manner of collecting and preserving insects 

 has also, I believe, prevented many from becoming collectors. A 

 gorgeous Fritillary (A. Paphia) as it glances past in the golden 

 splendour of its new-born beauty, or a noble Admiral (V. Atalantd) 

 as it quivers its velvet wings in the bright sunlight on a rich dahlia, is 

 a sight on which the most insensible could not gaze without admi- 

 ration ; but the same insect, with a large pin stuck through it, with 

 crushed and rubbed wings, the brightness of its colours almost gone 

 through bad catching, and the symmetry of its form destroyed by 

 bad setting, is a very different spectacle. And no wonder that the 

 contrast between the beauty of the living and the deformity of the 

 dead is sufficient to turn many in disgust from a pursuit which takes 

 away life from some of God's most beautiful creatures, and at the 

 same time destroys the beauty it wishes to preserve. 



Of the butterflies in my collection ( V. Antiopa) Camberwell 

 Beauty, was captured by a nursery-maid on the Shore Road, near 

 Greencastle, and given to her young master, a boy who was 

 making a collection. He, in usual school-boy fashion, stuck it 

 unset into his box, and, having tired of the whole thing, it was 

 handed over to me. I believe this is the second recorded capture 



