Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 August 1894 — BUTTEBFLY BUSINESS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BUTTEBFLY BUSINESS.

FULL-GROWN SPECIMENS ARE RAISED FROM THE EGGS. Str«n9« Adventures of the Butterfly Collectors in All Parte of the World. The chasing of butterflies has a fascination which does not always end with childhood. There are men who have never ceased to feel the enthusiasm of the hunt, and, combining with it the knowledge and resources of mature years, have gath-

ered butterfly collections which number thousands of specimens and worth thousands of dollars. There are many of these collectors in New York, but only one who breeds his own butterflies. Jacob Doll is his name, and in Brooklyn he has a caterpillar farm. While others are paying hundreds of dollars for rare butterflies, Mr. Doll is receiving the tiny eggs at much lower prices and rearing them until they burst into gorgeous butterflies. “An egg,” he said the other day at the farm, standing amid the shrubbery and wire cages under which were thousands of caterpillars feeding, “ doesn’t necessarily mean that you are going to get a butterfly. You are lucky if you get one out of ten eggs. And it is mostly the fault of the wretched little ichneumon fly. This parasite, which is the everyday wasp, stings its victim and leaves some eggs in its body. The caterpillar goes on feeding, and after full growth has been attained winds itself in the cocoon exactly as its fellows do. But instead of a beautiful butterfly emerging there is nothing but a mean little wasp. “There is another difficulty. The eggs come from all parts of the world, and the caterpillars want the food their fathers ate. Very often they won’t touch any other and then they die, as half the time you have no idea what plant they feed on, and couldn’t get it if you did. But it often happens that a caterpillar from Madagascar, say, will take kindly to one of our native leaves. Sometimes you think you have the right thing when you haven’t. They eat all right and begin to grow. Then some morning you find them all dead. The caterpillars didn’t dislike the plant till they arrived at a certain stage of development. Then it was poison to them. I have dozens of different plants, and upon every one of them a different species of caterpillar is feeding.”

“What are the stages of a butterfly’s growth?” I asked. “Well, to begin with the egg, it may be sent from the Alps or the Amazon—from Siberia or the Cape of Good Hope. I receive them on leaves inclosed in boxes. I keep the eggs in the house until the caterpillar crawls out. Then I determine, if 1 can, to what species the little fellow belongs and what he likes to eat, and put him on a plant under one of the cages, where he feeds and grows, meanwhile changing his skin two or three times. When he shows signs of having had enough of the world I put him into a box with two feet of earth in the bottom. He burrows in and is seen no more until he is ready to assume the gay life of the butterfly'. This may be a few weeks later, or, as is the case with some species, it may be two or three years. When he does come up he gets a few hours of life as a butterfly, and then a sniff of chloroform, which makes him ready for the collection. “How large is the collection? Well, I suppose there are between 60,01)0 and 70,000 specimens, including the duplicates. Let me show them to you.” With this Doll led the way indoors to the butterfly room. It is a room of cases. They begin with the floor and end with the ceiling. * Every climate that will produce a flower which the gorgeous creatures eat has paid tribute to this collection. There are butterflies whose wings measure nearly a foot across, 'there are tiny ones not half so large as a ten-cent piece. There are the magnificent Asiatic group in velvets of the most brilliant black, crimson, green and orange. The snow butterflies are here, far from the mountain tops, where they r flit over perpetual snow,. There are the Satrus Argentini from Chili, whose wings look like bits of burnished silver; and the Caligds. whose reverse side bears a striking resemblance to an owl,and the beautiful Thaliurae Rhipheus from Madagascar, with wings that glisten with a wonderful mingling of old gold and red and blue and yellow. “The males and females are side by side. In many cases it is the former that wear the brighter colors

' and are the more delicate A marked example of this is seen in ihe curious and gorgeous sock bearers, whose females are crawling, wingless creatures.” In the collection are many silk spinners, which vary greatly in size and beauty. There are members of the family gaudy with markings on the wings which are almost perfect representations of the human eye. Bat these fine creatures are not the ones that spin the silk of commerce. It is the smallest and meanest looking of them all—little fellows, of a dull, white color—which makes their cocoons of the long silk threads which can be woven. The silk spinners originally came from China, but thrive wherever the mulberry can be obtained. It would be an endless task to descJibe half the strange denizens of the butterfly world in the Doll collection. There are thousands of varieties, and yet so vast is this insect family that no one collector has a tenth part of the whole number. Furthermore, many varieties in existence are unknown. Every year collectors find butterflies which they are at a loss to classify. It is this possibility of capturing insects which are very rare or are complete strangers that lends so potent a charm to scientific butterfly hunting. Once while Mr. Doll was engaged in his pursuit in the Rocky Mountains a gorgeous butterfly flitted past Jiim and disappeared over a precipice. Far below it alighted on a flower. It was but the work of a moment for his guides to fasten a rope around the collector’s waist. Then they lowered

him into the depths. Suspended in mid air, with a rushing mountain stream hundreds of feet below, he deftly swept the butterfly into his net. It was well worth the perilous descent, being the only one of its kind ever found. The Indians took great interest in the operations of the butterfly hunters. They would ride a long distance out of their way to see what was going on. “What doin’?” one of the blanketed gentlemen would ask. When told that they were after butterflies the red man- would turn away with a look of disgust, But invariably he wheeled around again and asked: “Any tobac?” It is not necessary to go long distances for rare butterflies. The electric lights of New York City, with their irresistible attraction for the moths or night flies, have brought many new varieties to the notice of the collectors, and in the woods and swampy ground of Long Island and New Jersey a fly is occasionally caught which is worth much more than its weight in gold. But it is almost impossible to capture them without a minute knowledge of their time and manner of flying.

“Just last night,” said Mr. Doll, “I and a couple of friends went to a swamp near Brooklyn to see if we couldn’t catch some wood borers. While these are not a particularly rare fly, they bring Sfil or more apiece. It was 7 : 80 when we arrived at the place and not a borer was to be seen, but all of a sudden at ten minutes to 8, they began their low and rapid flight from bush to bush. “ ‘l’vegot one,’ somebody shouted. There was another shout, and then another, until we had secured five. But they stopped flying as suddenly as they began, and by 8 o’clock it was as if the insect never existed. This is always the way. /They feed for five minutes or so at twilight, and for the remainder of the time keep in hiding places that collectors have rarely discovered. “My methods in catching butterflies? Well, except for those that fly rapidly a bottle containing a little chloroform is best. You can put it over the victim and brush him in without the handling which a net often necessitates, and which is so disastrous to his beauty. The chloroform soon puts him to sleep. Moths are attracted by a lantern, the bigger and brighter the better, and you can bait them by spreading molasses on the trunk of a tree. The manner of catching a butterfly depends upon his habits. These are carefully studied by the successful collector. The late Prof. Hahnel spent five years doing this very thing along the banks of the Amazon. Noticing that the rare and beautiful Morpphos fly above the tree tops, he erected platforms twenty feet high, and there, during the hours of flight, secured enough specimens to supply the collectors of the world.”

AFTER THE HIGHFLYERS.

GOT ANY 'BACCA?

A WESTERN ADVENTURE.

THE GREATEST COLLECTOR OF ALL.