Their Butterfly Nets Go Too

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30535, 2 September 1964, Page 2

Their Butterfly Nets Go Too

Whenever Dr. and Mrs H. Sicher of Chicago set off for a trip—on a flight to a foreign land or merely for a drive in the country with a picnic lunch their butterfly nets and equipment go with them. Their collection, mainly of butterflies they have caught themselves at home and abroad, now runs into thousands.

It includes the spectacular trridescent blue morpho, with its five-inch wingspan, caught in Panama. This is the species used for butterfly brooches. "Our most unusual one, which I caught in Canada, is a black male swallowtail,"

Mrs Slcher said. “Swallowtails are usually yellow, and the male goes to the melanistic form only once in several millions. I just happened to see it fly down on a creek bed.” Overseas Additions Since leaving Chicago on a world tour, they have added to their collection in Rome, Israel, New Delhi and Singapore by about SO specimens, some of ' them duplicated. They hope to catch a few more when they go to Australia next week.

When caught the butterflies are killed instantly in a specially prepared mixture of sawdust, cyanide and plaster. Then they are placed in boxes of sand, damped with water and a few drops of carbolic acid, covered by a screen and then by blotting paper. The trick in packing them is to place them so that they cannot move and break an antenna. Everything has to be dated with details on whefe it was caught Apart from their boxed butterflies, Dr. and Mrs Sicher have a collection in envelopes on which they draw for exchanges for the world-wide Lepidopterists’ Association. “But our exchanges are done mostly tn the United States,” Elsey Sicher said. The American association publishes a journal dealing mainly with the genetics and biology of insects. Collectors’ Contribution “The practical collector can teach the scientists quite a lot about where he finds -a particular species and conditions —about the caterpillar as well as the butterfly,” she said. Mrs Sicher spends nearly two hours a day working on their collection. “I also belong to the American Civil Liberties Union and support the Council of Organisations for Racial Equality (C.O.RJS.) and the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People,” Mrs Sieher said. Dr. Sicher is emeritus professor of dentistry at Loyola University of Chicago, and is visiting the Dominion at the invitation of the New Zealand Dental Association.