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National Geographic : 1936 May
Contents
BUTTERFLIES-TRY AND GET THEM There Dr. J. A. Boisduval, then a n outstanding lepidopter ist, named and described them in entomological journals. Miner Lorquin's name, however, is at tached in his honor to a beau tiful black-brown butterfly, with bands of white and with yellow tipped wings. It is Lorquin's Ad miral (Basilar chia lorquini), found all up and down the Pacific coast region and in the far north west. Collectors i n San Francisco tell you that in the great fire fol lowing the earth quake of 1906 several valuable collections were destroyed, among them the Wright collection of but terflies of the Pacific coast. There is also a story, which can not quite be veri fied, that the fire destroyed one of the two then ex isting specimens of the butter fly known as Photograph trom Carnegie Museum TRIUMPHANT AND A BIT DAZED BY THE GOOD LUCK The captor is Dr. Andrey Avinoff, Director of the Carnegie Museum, Pitts burgh. His prize is the renowned Papilio homerus of Jamaica, largest swallowtail of the Western Hemisphere. This butterfly has a wingspread of nearly seven inches, and is extremely hard to net because, unlike many other species, it soars high up out of the reach of anything but the longest nets. With thumb and forefinger, the collector holds the coveted insect by its thorax so as not to injure the brightly colored wings. the American Yellow Parnassian. It is said that Wright had lent the other to Wil liam Henry Edwards, the great collector of his day. Those two specimens, perhaps de scendants of Siberian ancestors, came from Alaska. At San Francisco there once flew over the sand dunes near the sea, perhaps, a butterfly originally described by Boisduval and now called Cercyonis sthenele-one of the satyrs, grayish brown, small, incon spicuous. This butterfly is now apparently extinct. For years collectors have sought it in vain. Some deny that it was found in the sand hills and look elsewhere. They are encouraged by the reappear ance, after thirty-five years, of the once believed extinct Glaucopsyche xerces, a small blue butterfly that reappeared a few years ago in the San Francisco Presidio. I have taken numbers of this little butterfly, once rated as almost priceless. Because of new Federal buildings, this San Francisco "locality" now covers less than ten acres! 669
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