American Visitor Has Collected Butterflies For Seventy Years

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27924, 22 March 1956, Page 11

American Visitor Has Collected Butterflies For Seventy Years

The originator of butterfly-wings jewellery. Mr Adelbert Field Porter, is now visiting Christchurch. Mr Porter is a leading American lepidopterist, and owns oi.e of the world’s largest private collections of butterflies and moths.

In his search for beautiful insects. Mr Porter, a former Chicago cattle buyer, has travelled in most countries of the world, but extensively in all but one of the So ith American countries —Paraguay, e .uth America, he believes, is the best hunting ground for insects.

Although Mr x 3 orler has never previously been to New Zealand in his search for butterflies and moths, he has a fairly complete Dominion collection which originally belonged to the Otago Museum.

Before World War I, Mr Porter had made a number of expeditions to South America to collect insects. Just before leaving for another trip to British Guiana, he jumped at the chance of earning some money to reimburse him for his expenses, by accepting the task of seeking out a 30ftplus boa constrictor for the Bronx Zoo, New York. Gift of Boa Constrictor He caught one boa constrictor alive, but when he found that it measured only 18ft 2in. decided that it was “too small” for the zoo and shot it. The skin lay in his home for nearly three years, and in a letter to the curator of the museum in Dunedin, he mentioned it. The curator offered to exchange part of the Museum’s butterfly collection for the skin, and fAr Porter agreed. Mr Porter does not think much of New Zealand’s butterflies. “New Zealand is very povertystricken as to huterflies.” he said yesterday. “There are only seven different kinds in all the land.” Moths and butterflies captured and pressed in lampshades, picture frames, jewellery, ornaments, and even in the mounting of a 3ft x 4ft photographic enlargement of a nude taken irom a French postcard, add bright patches of colour all over Mr Porter's 90-year-old mansion house in his home town of Decorah. lowa.

Atop the house and overlooking the 16 main rooms in its two storeys is a lone, sentinel-like tower which Mr Porter lights at night to attract moths. All he has to do is sit in the tower with a net and ” ait for his quarry to seek him out.

In seven big wooden cases, each with 28 drawers and each about five feet high, are Mr Porter’s collection of 60,000 butterflies and moths caught in his nets in many countries of the world over a period of more than half a century. When asked how long he had collected butterflies, Mr Porter replied: “Seventy-three. 72 years I guess.” "How old are you, then?” Mr Porter was asked yesterday. “Seventy-seven,” he replied. “I started pretty young, but I started collecting everything, and it did not take me long to realise that I could not do justice to it all. and as I thought butterflies and moths were the prettiest. I started going after them.’’

Mr Porter is well known in the United States as one of the nation’s most ingenious entomologists. As a young man. soon after the turn of the century, while arranging his specimens under glass. he conceived the idea of a new decorative effect. He immediately put the idea into practice, and made a commercial venture—a remarkably successful one which was copied throughout the world. The effect was applied to house interiors, table tops, wall and vase plaques, tumbler coasters and brooches.

One of Mr Porter’s best pieces—a brilliantly designed circular tray inset with butterfly wings—was a gift to President Wilson on the occasion of his marriage. Another beautiful example of his art is worn by his wife in a throat charm. A tear-shaped pendant contains the world’s smallest butterfly, a tiny brown and silver-spotted insect half a fingernail across, on a background of deep blue wing. The butterfly. Lycaene exilis, comes from California. The world’s biggest winged insect is also in Mr Porter’s collection. It is a mottled moth. Dynastes hercules. with long projections on each lower wing, and 13in across.