You know you’re desperate when you ask what you should blog about, your eight-year-old says “butterflies,” and you start Googling! Well, I did learn some interesting things.
- The oldest pinned insect is a Bath White butterfly (Pontia daplidice), previously known as “Vernon’s Half Mourner”, captured in 1702.
2. Butterfly collecting was a popular hobby in the Victorian era.
3. Herman Strecker (1836-1901) amassed the largest collection of butterflies and moths in the Americas, with over 50,000 specimens.
4. Both Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill collected butterflies, at home and abroad.
5. Looking at past sales of butterflies at auctions suggests that butterfly collecting reached its peak before World War I.
6. It’s been argued that social disapproval of butterfly collecting emerged in the early 1960s with the publication of Silent Spring and The Collector. (It’s worth noting that butterfly collecting never made a big impact on butterfly populations; habitat destruction is the real culprit.)
7. New butterfly species are discovered every year, including in existing museum collections (when experts examine multiple specimens previously thought to be one species).
Sources
- “What’s on the van? – Oldest pinned insect in the world”
- “Why we still collect butterflies” by Andrew Warren
- “Wings of desire: Why the hobby of Butterfly collecting is over – it’s all about conservation now” by Peter Marren
- “Historian Views 19th Century America Through Lens of Butterfly Collecting” by Gary Shapiro