“That, gentlemen, is my solitary experience of spooks. I never want to have another. I was a scoffer before; I am a believer now. And if you told me that in the bush I speak of there were now standing ready for me, as a free gift, two buck-wagons loaded up with ivory—why, I should decline the offer.
“Never would I be induced to enter that veldt again!”
Chapter Four.
The Professor’s Butterfly.
Quite the most remarkable feature of an April meeting of the Entomological Society in 1880 something was the production, by Professor Parchell, F.Z.S., F.L.S., one of the oldest and most enthusiastic members of the Society, of a new and remarkable species of Achraea hitherto quite unknown to science. The Professor was radiant and suffused with happiness. He had long been an ardent collector in England and Europe; but only recently had he turned his footsteps to the far-off lands south of the equator. It had been the dream of his life. And now, having lately resigned his chair at Cambridge, at the age of sixty, at his first essay in Cape Colony, a region fairly well-known to entomologists, he had gratified his heart’s desire, and discovered a species.
The new butterfly, which, it appeared, from a paper read by the Professor, had been found in some numbers, but within a very limited area—a mere speck of country—was shown in a carefully constructed case. There were sixteen specimens; and it was settled that the butterfly was to be known to science as Achraea Parchelli, thus perpetuating the Professor and his discovery to the ages yet unborn. The one particularity which marked the insect out from among its fellows was very striking. Upon the upper side of the hind-wings, right in the centre, there appeared a complete triangular space of silver, evenly bordered by circular black markings. This peculiarity, which was shared by male and female alike, was very beautiful and very marked; and the enthusiastic collectors gathered at the Society’s meeting were, as the box of specimens was passed from hand to hand, all delighted with the new treasure. As for the Professor himself, never, except perhaps in that supreme moment when he had discovered within his net this new wonder, had he experienced such a glow of rapture and of triumph.
Amongst the Fellows of the Society met this evening sat Horace Maybold, a good-looking young man of six-and-twenty, who, having some private means, and an unquenchable thirst for the collection of butterflies, spent most of his time in going to and fro upon the earth in search of rare specie, Horace had travelled in many lands, and had made a good many discoveries well-known to his brethren; and quite recently he had turned his attention to the Achraeinae, the very family in which Professor Parchell had made his mark. The new butterfly interested him a good deal. Naturally he at once burned to possess it in his own collection, and, after the meeting broke up, he approached the Professor and sounded him on the subject. In his paper read to the Society that gentleman had rather vaguely, described the habitat of the new species as “in the Eastern Province of Cape Colony, in a small and compact area within fifty miles of the east bank of the Sunday’s River.” But it appeared very quickly that the Professor for the present was unwilling to part with any of his specimens—even for an adequate consideration—or to impart the exact locality in which the species was to be found.
Horace had rather reckoned upon this, but he was none the less a little chagrined at the old gentleman’s closeness.