When spring and summer came I was very busy gathering plants, pressing them for my little herbarium, and collecting shells which I found in the woodlands and when wading the streams. Among insects the beetles and butterflies pleased me most. Later my home was in North Carolina, whither the family removed from central Ohio when I was a child of ten. Here the same process went on, with the added pleasure of being near a library, in which, among other books, was a copy of Wilson and Bonaparte’s “American Ornithology,” many of the plates in which I copied, and Say’s work on “American Entomology.” The collection of plants and insects grew apace, and I was allowed to begin to stuff and mount birds.
Fig. 2
WING SCALES
Greatly magnified scales of Cabbage butterfly
In 1863 I came north, and for ten years my life was passed in college and professional schools, where I had little time to study ornithology and entomology. But the love of living things survived, and when, at last settled in active professional life, I began to feel the need of some pursuit which would furnish a physical as well as intellectual recreation, I reverted to the study of insects. This took me into the woods and fields.
Having begun to collect insects, I made up my mind that I must learn to know all about them. I sought for books on the subject. There were none of any value in the libraries about me. I then began to buy books, and have continued, until today I possess a collection of works upon entomology which is said to be the largest in private hands in America. I began to seek information from other students of the subject. The circle of my correspondence has grown until it covers many lands. One of my correspondents, the late W. H. Edwards of Coalburg, West Virginia, wrote to me that he wished to publish the third volume of his magnificent work, “The Butterflies of North America,” and therefore contemplated offering his collection to the British Museum in order to obtain the necessary funds. I replied to him that I would undertake to defray the expense of bringing out the third volume of his work, provided he would turn over the collection to me, so that it might be incorporated with my own. He accepted my offer, and I thus saved for America its most important collection of butterflies. I bought many other collections from time to time. I traveled widely, always collecting, and I employed men to collect for me in foreign lands. Today my collection is one of the largest in existence, containing tens of thousands of species and hundreds of thousands of specimens.
Fig. 3
EGG OF THE VICEROY