NOTES ON BUTTERFLIES, WITH DIRECTIONS FOR BREEDING THEM FROM THE EGG

Extract

I am asked to write for the Can. Ent. a paper on breeding butterflies, and on taking observations of the larval stages, and I comply with pleasure, hoping that what I shall say may be the means of inducing some collectors to cultivate this field. There are many local collections of butterflies in Canada and the United States, and a few general North American collections, more or less complete. But their owners are mostly satisfied with mere collecting and accumulating specimens of the imago. Very few know anything of the larval and other stages of the butterflies, unless of some of the common species. And where anything is known, very little is given to the world. Some collectors, however, have also been breeders of butterflies, sphinges and moths on a large scale. As for example, our friends, John Akhurst and Professor Julius E. Meyer, of Brooklyn, each of whom could fill a good-sized volume, if they would relate one half of what they know on these subjects. Such an one was the late William Newman, of Philadelphia, who lived to a good old age, and had spent his spare hours for many years in collecting and breeding lepidoptera. But none of these gentlemen have published a line that I am aware of, and the entomological world is not much the wiser for their private experience. So that practically here is a great field almost unworked.