FORTUNES IN DEAD INSECTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2104, 21 June 1894, Page 42

FORTUNES IN DEAD INSECTS.

Close to Charing Cross station is the unpretentious office of the greatest entomological agent in the world.

This agent sends out two collectors on three-year trips to South America and India, while a third is resting at home. Besides these collectors there are numerous missionaries and army officers in tropical regions who periodically forward cigar-boxes full of dead insects, wrapped separately in pieces of newspaper.

The writer was shown a huge beetle nearly 5m long, called the Goliathus Drutii, which was taken on the West Coast of Africa. The insect was received alive in London and deposited at the Zoological Gardens, where it lived for two months on water melon, bananas, and cold tea. The dead specimen is now priced at £40.

The collector, Mr C. M. Woodford, was two years among the cannibal tribes of the Sjlomon Islands before he discovered the Ornithoptera Victoria butterfly, which is valred at £20. The Ornithoptera Wahnesii, from the game region, is the rarest and most expensive insect in the world. A specimen is worth £35. and the collector was nearly three years in procuring one of these costly butterflies.

A curious feature of entomology is that an insect caught in one place may be only worth a few pence, whilst if taken in another its value is as many pounds. The expert swindler knows this, and is not slow to take advantage of it.

One day a respectably dressed man entered tha Gbaring Cross establishment and purchased a fine specimen of the Continental Ashworthii for Is 6d. Next day the Charing Cross agent chanced to meet; one of bis aristocratic customers in Gatti'?, close by, and his lordship remarked that he had secured for the modest pum of Uga a treasure, in the shape of an Ashworthii butterfly, captured on Clapham Common. When the agent saw hi 3 customer's great bargain, he instantly proved it to be the very insect he had sold the previous day, and which had been captured hundreds of miles from England. - On the other hand, a common scarlet fger which bad been bought for 2d was recently fold by auction for £9 ; and a black specimen of the Arctic Oaja, which had originally co3t 4d, realised 13gs a weefc later.

Entomflogy is a pretty expensive hobby. At Mr Rothschild's beautiful house near Tring, a staff of curators are constantly employed in arranging his superb collection, which is valued at £10,000. <The insects are kept, in 30 mahogany cabinets, which cost £60 each, and contain 40 interchangeable drawers. The very pins which secure the

specimens to the cork bottoms are of pure silver, and cost 7s 6d a thousand.

We have it on the authority of Mr Rothschild's buyer that the most costly collection of insects in the world belongs to the brothers Oberthur, of R9nnes. The entomological museum which these wealthy gentlemen have set up at their country residence is simply unrivalled, and must have co3t at least £50,000.