The fact, as revealed in a recent lawsuit, that there is a
gentleman in this country who spends £10,000 a year upon his
butterfly collection would have disturbed me more in the early
nineties than it does to-day. I can bear it calmly now, but
twenty-five years ago the knowledge would have spoilt my pride in
my own collection, upon which I was already spending the best
part of threepence a week pocket-money. Perhaps, though, I should
have consoled myself with the thought that I was the truer
enthusiast of the two; for when my rival hears of a rare
butterfly in Brazil, he sends a man out to Brazil to capture it,
whereas I, when I heard that there was a Clouded Yellow in the
garden, took good care that nobody but myself encompassed its
death. Our aims also were different. I purposely left Brazil out
of it.
Whether butterfly-hunting is good or bad for the character I
cannot undertake to decide. No doubt it can be justified as
clearly as fox- hunting. If the fox eats chickens, the
butterfly's child eats vegetables; if fox-hunting improves the
breed of horses, butterfly-hunting improves the health of boys.
But at least, we never told ourselves that butterflies liked
being pursued, as (I understand) foxes like being hunted. We were
moderately honest about it. And we comforted ourselves in the end
with the assurance of many eminent naturalists that "insects
don't feel pain."
I have often wondered how naturalists dare to speak with such
authority. Do they never have dreams at night of an after-life in
some other world, wherein they are pursued by giant insects eager
to increase their "naturalist collection"--insects who assure
each other carelessly that "naturalists don't feel pain"? Perhaps
they do so dream. But we, at any rate, slept well, for we had
never dogmatized about a butterfly's feelings. We only quoted the
wise men.
But if there might be doubt about the sensitiveness of a
butterfly, there could be no doubt about his distinguishing
marks. It was amazing to us how many grown-up and (presumably)
educated men and women did not know that a butterfly had knobs on
the end of his antennae, and that the moth had none. Where had
they been all these years to be so ignorant? Well-meaning but
misguided aunts, with mysterious promises of a new butterfly for
our collection, would produce some common Yellow Underwing from
an envelope, innocent (for which they may be forgiven) that only
a personal capture had any value to us, but unforgivably ignorant
that a Yellow Underwing was a moth. We did not collect moths;
there were too many of them. And moths are nocturnal creatures. A
hunter whose bed-time depends upon the whim of another is
handicapped for the night-chase.
But butterflies come out when the sun comes out, which is just
when little boys should be out; and there are not too many
butterflies in England. I knew them all by name once, and could
have recognized any that I saw--yes, even Hampstead's Albion Eye
(or was it Albion's Hampstead Eye?), of which only one specimen
had ever been caught in this country; presumably by Hampstead--or
Albion. In my day-dreams the second specimen was caught by me.
Yet he was an insignificant-looking fellow, and perhaps I should
have been better pleased with a Camberwell Beauty, a Purple
Emperor, or a Swallowtail. Unhappily the Purple Emperor (so the
book told us) haunted the tops of trees, which was to take an
unfair advantage of a boy small for his age, and the Swallowtail
haunted Norfolk, which was equally inconsiderate of a family
which kept holiday in the south. The Camberwell Beauty sounded
more hopeful, but I suppose the trams disheartened him. I doubt
if he ever haunted Camberwell in my time.
With threepence a week one has to be careful. It was necessary to
buy killing-boxes and setting-boards, but butterfly-nets could be
made at home. A stick, a piece of copper wire, and some muslin
were all that were necessary. One liked the muslin to be green,
for there was a feeling that this deceived the butterfly in some
way; he thought that Birnam Wood was merely coming to Dunsinane
when he saw it approaching, and that the queer-looking thing
behind was some local efflorescence. So he resumed his dalliance
with the herbaceous border, and was never more surprised in his
life than when it turned out to be a boy and a butterfly-net.
Green muslin, then, but a plain piece of cane for the stick. None
of your collapsible fishing-rods--"suitable for a Purple
Emperor." Leave those to the millionaire's sons.
It comes back to me now that I am doing this afternoon what I did
more than twenty-five years ago; I am writing an article upon the
way to make a butterfly-net. For my first contribution to the
press was upon this subject. I sent it to the editor of some
boys' paper, and his failure to print it puzzled me a good deal,
since every word in it (I was sure) was correctly spelt. Of
course, I see now that you want more in an article than that. But
besides being puzzled I was extremely disappointed, for I wanted
badly the money that it should have brought in. I wanted it in
order to buy a butterfly-net; the stick and the copper wire and
the green muslin being (in my hands, at any rate) more suited to
an article.