"Pay Up, Sir."

Otago Witness, Issue 2239, 28 January 1897, Page 53

"Pay Up, Sir."

A butcher living in a well-known town in Scotland is renowned among his contemporaries for the quaintnees and originality of some of his remarks. • On a road leading to a neighbouring parish he one day met a gentleman who at the time was in his debt for some meat. After a saluta* . tion the gentleman remarked : •That's a % fine, fat dog you have, Alexander." 41 Sac wesl he may, sir," was the reply, * for he has an easy conscience, and is oot o' debt, and that* more than you or I can say." The hint was taken, and Sandy got hit money next day.

Jnsectg Form the Pictures.

" That is the biggest thing I have ever done, a copy of tho popular picture * The Death of Nelson,' made entirely of butterflies, moths, and beetles," said an elderly man in a suburb of London, who lives by making pictures and designs formed wholly of insects of various kinds. 11 That picture has taken me nearly a year to put) together in my spare time, more than 10,000 insects forming the design. I think it will be bought by a member of Parliament who has a private museum of his own. Very little of my work is as elaborate as this, simple maps of England and geometrical designs formed of these insects being what I sell most of ; but the greater proportion of my work is done to order for people who have gone in for elementary insectcollecting, and then decided on having their specimens so mounted as to form an ornament for the wall. " I have known many people who have had a sort of mania for butterfly decorations. Near Blackheath I carried a band of • peacock ' butterflies all round a drawing-room cornice, making a pattern of butterfly forget-me-nots in spaces all round the same roam. I generally spend the summer near Canterbury, and get or breed butterflies and moths in Urge quantities ; but I have to buy large numbers of foreign decorative insects from dealers."