Methods of Moth Collecting

Bücher

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PREFACE IN the following pages I have tried to give, for the benefit of those commencing a collection of British lepidoptera, a short sketch of the various methods of going to work. No originality whatever is claimed for anything the book contains, save in so far that no method is advocated which I have not employed extensively myself during the last five-and-twenty years. Methods of Moth Collecting the objects of any collection of lepidoptera must necessarily vary in accordance with the temperament and ambitions of the individual collector. In some cases it is probable that a person starting a collection never either at the beginning or afterwards stops to think whether he or she has any definite object in view. In most cases the collection will have been begun in schooldays, when at some period or other a great number of us are seized by the desire to collect. Some prefer cigarette cards or stamps. But schoolboys and girls who have been brought up to love the country are almost sure, if only for a short time, to start a collection of lepidoptera or birds eggs or both. The large majority of these collections do not get very far. The collecting fever dies down and a few unfortunate specimens lie mouldering in a store-box until they are thrown away. Some collections are continued more or less energetically for a time, and then, as other and more important interests intervene, are dropped and never - restarted. Some few are pursued with varying industry, until they gradually become what all collections should be-the sources of endless pleasure and instruction to their authors. There are, of course, many collectors who only really begin seriously late in life-and who may be assumed to have set themselves some definite object in doing so. Whether, however, we began at the age of six or sixty it will do us no harm to ask ourselves the question Why do we collect lepidoptera In answering it we shall place ourselves in one of three classes of lepidopterist, which may be roughly summarised as follows, The scientific investigator who takes specimens purely with a view to scientific observation b the pure collector-with the youthful passion for collecting, as such, still alive in his veins-and whose highest object is to show his friends the beauty of his collection c the average lepidopterist whose aspirations lie somewhere between these two extremes. There are only a few who can lay claim to being in class a there are considerably more in class b than would admit it the great majority can properly be ranked in class c, although many of them have hardly given their objects a minutes thought . There is nothing discreditable in loving collecting for its own sake, but the slaughter of numbers of insects for show purposes alone is, in itself, not an entirely satisfactory hobby. We may quite reasonably delight in a fine collection, provided the amassing of that collection has given us a real insight into works of nature which we should otherwise never have attained-provided, in fact, our pursuit of entomology is always with a view to increasing our knowledge of the subject. It may be said that those who make a large collection of lepidoptera must inevitably amass a great deal of knowledge in the process, but this is by no means always true. Many possessors of good collections-especially those who go in largely for purchasing or exchanging specimens--never obtain any- thing but a most slight and superficial view of the subject...