RARE BUTTERFLIES

Evening Star, Issue 26028, 17 February 1947, Page 8

RARE BUTTERFLIES

MISSING COLLECTIONS FOUND REMOVED FROM AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND MUSEUMS (Ree. 8 a.m.) LONDON. February 16. •Detectives recovered from a house in the Home Counties a collection of rare butterflies worth thousands of pounds, allegedly missing from Australian and New Zealand museums, says the ‘ News of the World.’ Scotland Yard, after months of inquiry, thus believes it has solved one of its strangest cases. Tho Melbourne Criminal Investigation Department learned, early ip 1946 that entomologists had discovered that nearly 1,000 very rare Australian butterfly specimens had disappeared from the Melbourne Museum, also that museum authorities in other Australian and New Zealand cities had discovered that their" collections of- butterflies had vanished. Two Australian detectives investigated, and discovered that 3,000 butterflies were missing. Many were unique. The detectives were puzzled, because the collections ivere kept in locked cabinets, and almost continuously under observation by museum attendants. The Australian police made inquiries in the United States, and eventually made contact with Scotland Yard, whose officers a few days ago entered with a search warrant a house in the Home Counties, and found a large collection of butterflies. Police vans transported the glasstopped cases to London. The detectives are alleged to have found that the original Australian and New Zealand collections had been broken up and distributed among other cases. Experts from the British Museum are' now classifying all the specimens and. redistributing them. Scotland Yard is preparing a report for the Director of Public Prosecutions.

[Dr H. D. Skinner,, of the Otago Museum, stated to-day that no butterflies had been stolen .from the museum’s collection, and he had no knowledge of any losses having been suffered by other museums in New Zealand].