Butterfly People

by William R. Leach

  96. Excursus 43, “Color Preferences of Butterflies,” BEUSC, vol. 2, pp. 1101–5, and excursus 70, “Sexual Diversity in the Form of the Scales,” BEUSC, vol. 2, pp. 1681–83.

  97. These words of Scudder’s were quoted in a letter from William Henry Edwards to Theodore Mead, April 29, 1877, TM. The original Scudder letter is lost.

  98. Scudder, Butterflies, 242–43; see Erica E. Hirshler, A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in Boston, 1870–1940 (Boston: MFA Publications, 2001), 242–43.

  99. So, too, as he grew older, Wallace proposed yet another explanation for beauty: a higher power, not religious in any conventional sense but spiritual, serving mankind and working through natural selection, yet at the same time acting independently to produce all the splendor of the world. Alfred Russel Wallace, “The Colours of Animals and Plants,” Macmillan’s Magazine (September–October 1872): 641–42. See also Denis Diderot, quoted in Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, vol. 2, The Science of Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1969), 162. I have been influenced here by Jakub Novak’s discussion of Wallace in his “Alfred Russel Wallace and August Weismann’s Evolution,” 1–207.

  100. Edwards to Scudder, January 13, 1888, SS-BMS.

  101. Grote, “Moths and Moth-Catchers,” 247. The late Thomas Eisner, a noted authority on chemical ecology at Cornell University, spoke the same passionate language of Scudder, Wallace, and Grote in regard to the “utter splendor that is embodied in the lepidopteran wing.” Under “high magnification,” he saw in the wings of many butterflies “a world of hidden dimensions…, a treasury of abstract art to be explored, pointillist in design, elegant in coloration, and infinitely pleasing. There is proof in these images that science and art, while dwelling separately in the confines of our consciousness, do merge in that vague domain of the subconscious that guides us in our passion.” Thomas Eisner, “Hidden Splendor,” Wings (Spring 2006): 5.

  102. Grote, “Collecting Noctuidae by Lake Erie,” 99.

  6. In the Wake of Empire

  1. Paul Maassen to Strecker, December 3, 1872, HS-FM.

  2. Henry Stainton to Otto Staudinger, December 3, 1872 (Stainton’s draft copy), Stainton Papers, NHM-LONDON.

  3. Augustus Grote, The Hawk Moths of North America (Bremen, 1886), 61, and Theodore Mead to William Henry Edwards, December 17, 1872, WHE-SA.

  4. On the entomology, see Roland Trimen, “On Some Remarkable Mimetic Analogies Among African Butterflies,” Transactions of the Linnean Society 26 (1868): 503n; and Fa-Ti-Fan, British Naturalists in Qing China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 11–56.

  5. Alfred Russel Wallace, “The Colours of Animals and Plants,” published in Macmillan’s Magazine (September-October 1877) and, a month later, in American Naturalist 11, no. 11 (1877): 641–62.

  6. Robert Rippon, Icones Ornithopterorum (London, 1898), 13. “It is safe to say,” Rippon observed of Rothschild’s collection, “that in no other part of the world is there such a vast collection of Lepidoptera, especially of Eastern Papilionidae: that among the Ornithoptera is to be found nearly every known form—and in such immense series and representing so many localities, that it may be considered that in this museum alone the materials for any account of research may be obtained.”

  7. See Hans Fruhstorfer’s bills of sale to the museum, October 21 and November 12, 1898, MNK.

  8. Rippon, Icones Ornithopterorum, 13.

  9. William Holle (a German immigrant to Sheboygan, Wisconsin) to Herman Strecker, May 16, 1878, HS-FM.

  10. See O. H. Staudinger, introduction, Exotische Tagfalter (Berlin, 1888–92); my translation.

  11. George Louis Leclerc Buffon, “Of Insects of the Third Order,” Natural History of Birds, Fish, Insects, and Reptiles (London, 1793), 5:274.

  12. Figures for the mid-1700s appear in the Encyclopedia Britannica (London, 1775), vol. 3. For butterflies, see under “Papilio,” 454. For Buffon’s figures, see Natural History of Birds, Fish, Insects and Reptiles, 5:274. For the 1885 figure, see Samuel Scudder, Butterflies: Their Structure, Changes, and Life-Histories (New York: Holt, 1881), 226, and Scudder, BEUSC (Cambridge, 1889), vol. 1, p. 236. For recent figures, see Oakley Shields, “World Number of Butterflies,” Journal of the Lepidopterists’ Society 43, no. 3 (1989): 178.

  13. On British practice as well as the general pattern, see Roland Oliver and G. N. Sanderson, eds., The Cambridge History of Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1985), 6:99; Ronald Robinson, John Gallagher, and Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians (New York: St. Martin’s, 1961), 7; and T. O. Lloyd, The British Empire, 1558–1995 (London: Oxford University Press, 1995), 170.

  14. P. J. Marshall, “The World Shaped by Empire,” in The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire, ed. P. J. Marshall (London: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 7–80.

  15. Deepak Kumar, Science and the Raj, 1857–1905 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 110. On the imperialist significance of the railroad (and for the source of the quote), see Ronald E. Robinson, “Introduction: Railway Imperialism,” in Railway Imperialism, ed. Clarence B. Davis and Kenneth E. Wilburn (New York: Greenwood, 1991), 3.

  16. On this road, see Patrick Sweeter, Streeter of Bond Street: A Victorian Jeweler (London: Harlow, 1993), 121, 126–27.

  17. Will Doherty to his mother, August 31, 1889, JMH; and Doherty to William Holland, quoted in Holland’s “Asiatic Lepidoptera, List of Diurnal Lepidoptera taken by Mr. William Doherty of Cincinnati in Celebes, June and July, 1887, with Descriptions of Some Apparently New Forms,” Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History 25 (1890): 52–82. I thank Bernadette Callery, head of the research library of the Carnegie Museum, for directing me to this source.

  18. The auctioning of Wallace’s butterflies is mentioned in a letter from Richard Stretch to Henry Edwards, November 17, 1874, HE; see also Emily Grace Allingham, A Romance of the Rostrum (London: H. F. and G. Witherby, 1924), who dates the sale in 1872 (p. 131). Prefaced by Lord Walter Rothschild, who spent many hours at Stevens’s, Allingham’s book is the richest source for information on the place, tracing natural history sales from start to nearly finish, with a full chapter devoted to insect sales (pp. 128–52) and much information on related enthusiasms (birds and birds’ eggs and orchids, for instance). On the power of the London auction as a means of making or establishing market prices, see Brian Learmont, History of the Auction (Iver: Barnard and Learmont, 1985), 24–65.

  19. See William Kirby, “The Bird-Winged Butterflies of the East,” Nature 51, no. 1315 (1895): 254–58. Although the British preference for all things English never disappeared, it did weaken, as Kirby realized more strongly with hindsight. “Since the death of Hewitson (1878),” he wrote, “new countries opened up, and wonderful butterflies reached Europe, never dreamed of by Hewitson, or which remained unobtainable objects of his desire, to the last. Chief among these may be mentioned the butterflies of Central Asia, a terra incognita (for the most part) in Hewitson’s time; and the butterflies of the Eastern Archipelago, above all the brilliantly colored Ornithoptera (or bird wings) of these islands.” According to Hewitson, Kirby’s catalog was “a wonderful summary of all that has been done.” Hewitson to Strecker, September 1873, HS-FM. See also Kirby, A Synonymic Catalogue of Diurnal Lepidoptera (London, 1871), with a supplement in 1877. Kirby, who briefly served as curator of insects in Dublin, hated the Irish and longed to leave Dublin “to start an insect business in London,” as he told Henry Edwards, “for the express purpose of supplying foreign and provincial Entomologists with greater facilities for obtaining what they want. I expect to do more with foreign Lep. than anything else.” Kirby to Edwards, September 22, 1874, HE. In the late 1870s, he got a job as a curator at the British Museum, thereby escaping his horrid Dublin, but he flopped in his effort to create a sideline business.

  20. On Watkins & Doncaster, see Michael A. Salmon, The Aurelian Legacy: British Butterflies and Their Collectors (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 71; on Janson’s, se
e J. Harvey, Paula Gilbert, et al., “Janson Family Archives,” in A Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Entomological Library of the Natural History Museum, London (New York: Mansell, 1996), 110. Winston Churchill, the future prime minister of England, the elder son of Randolph Churchill, and a butterfly lover, participated in this tropical collecting “mania.” On a country vacation away from home, young “Winny,” as he was then called, assured his mother that he was “never at a loss for anything to do, for I shall be occupied with ‘Butterflying’ all day (I was last year).” He specialized in native insects, of course, but in the mid-1890s, as a young officer stationed in Bangalore, India, he caught numerous specimens, upwards of sixty-five kinds. His “bungalow” mates complained that the place “is degenerating into a taxidermist’s shop.” A nearby Bangalore garden thrilled him, “full of Purple Emperors, White Admirals, and Swallowtails and many other rare and beautiful insects.” See Churchill to his brother, Jack, October 15, 1896, and Churchill to his mother, October 21, 1896, in Randolph Churchill, Winston S. Churchill: Companion, Volume I, Part I, 1874–1896 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967), 690, 694–95.

  21. William Weaver to Strecker, August 15, 1876, HS-FM.

  22. Henry Elwes to Strecker, September 13, 1888, HS-FM.

  23. Paul Mowis, a dealer in butterflies, lived in Darjeeling; he collected bravely in Tibet, harvesting rare insects, such as the male of the beautiful Teinopalpus imperialis, and selling them to museums throughout the world. Mowis sold male specimens to Berlin’s Museum für Naturkunde for £25, “the largest sum he had ever received for an insect”; see “Notes and News,” EN (April 1890): 57.

  24. Henry Elwes, Memoirs of Travel, Sport, and Natural History (London: E. Benn, 1930), 77–79. On the size of Godman’s collection, see Henry Stainton to Otto Staudinger, September 26, 1880, NHM-LONDON.

  25. Alfred Wailly, On Silk-Producing Bombyces and Other Lepidoptera (London, 1880), 1.

  26. Wailly to Strecker, January 21, 1880, and Henry Skinner to Strecker, April 18, 1883, HS-FM.

  27. Wailly to Strecker, July 29, 1880, HS-FM.

  28. Wailly to Strecker, December 15, 1879, and December 13, 1881, HS-FM.

  29. The French played a lesser role, despite their imperialist claims on Indochina in the 1860s and sub-Saharan Africa in the 1890s; Marshall, “The World Shaped by Empire,” 54–55. There was a lively exotic trade in Paris, managed partly by the Deyrolle family, which had operated a natural history business since the 1850s, selling abroad to Americans like Theodore Mead. Other major patrons were the Muséum Nationale d’Histoire Naturelle of Paris and the Oberthür brothers, Charles and René, amateur collectors living in reclusive splendor in the countryside just outside the city. A composer and poet, Charles Oberthür, published his own catalogs (Études d’Entomologie) in 1875 and beyond, on African, Asian, and South American butterflies, acquired by missionaries, resident Europeans, or experienced naturalists. See Charles Oberthür, Études d’Entomologie 1 (Paris, 1876–84), 1:13, 19; 3: ix, xi, 12; and vols. 6–10, preface. In the last, Oberthür credits especially the collecting in South America of Jean Stoltzmann, a “naturalist” of great “zeal” and “ardor” who had penetrated the “mysterious” ways of the tropics “with remarkable exactitude.” Émile Deyrolle sold collecting equipment to Theodore Mead and Augustus Grote in the 1870s, and in 1879, Neumoegen purchased a rare green-and-gray iridescent African swallowtail, Papilio zalmoxis, one of the most beautiful butterflies in the world. See Émile Deyrolle to Neumoegen, c. June or July 1876, copied by Neumoegen for Strecker, in a letter to Strecker, August 8, 1876, HS-FM. See, for a list of other Paris dealers, Reinhard Gaedike, in Deutsches Entomologische Institute, Nova Supplementa Entomologica 6 (1995): 1–91. Gaedike supplies the dates of the Deyrolle merchants: Achille, 1813–1865; Émile, 1838–1917; Henri, 1827–1902; and Théophile, 1843–1923. He lists one insect merchant in Paris who may have preceded the Deyrolles—Henry Dupont, 1798–1873 (p. 102).

  30. Doherty to his father, February 10, 1892; and to his mother, March 31, 1888, JMH.

  31. German butterfly collectors, for instance, hunted for insects at the mouth of the Congo River during an expedition led by Paul Gussfeldt to West Africa between 1873 and 1876. Julius Falkenstein was among the collectors, his butterflies described and figured in catalogs by H. Dewitz. See Dewitz, “Afrikanische Tagschmetterlinge,” Nova Acta, vol. 41 (Halle, 1879). See also Paul Gussfeldt et al., Die Loango-Expedition, 1873–1876 (Leipzig, 1879).

  32. On Godeffroy, see Jacob Boll to Strecker, November 11, 1875, HS-FM; and, historically, see Lynn K. Nyhart, Modern Nature: The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 130–32.

  33. Woldemar Geffcken to Strecker, no date, 1874; December 2, 1878; and September 9, 1882, HS-FM. On Bremen, see Bernhard Gerhard to Strecker, January 13, 1877. In his letters, Geffcken describes at some length the trade in butterflies in German towns. For an extensive—and very useful—1895 list of insect dealers (with a focus on lepidoptera) throughout Germany, see R. Friedlander and Sons, Zoologisches Adressbuch: Namen und Adressen der lebenden Zoologen, Anatomen, Physiologen und Zoopalaeontologen (Berlin: R. Friedlander, 1895), 1–76. This source also lists similar data for other countries, including France, England, and the United States. Hans Godeffroy, in Hamburg, had a transatlantic reputation (William Henry Edwards knew of him) and sold, among other things, Indian and Chinese butterflies.

  34. Strecker to Holland, January 31, 1883, WH-CM. On the American use of Staudinger as a standard, see Berthold Neumoegen to Strecker, December 1, 1882, HS-FM: “I want to sell exotics … for cash only and my prices will be nearly as possible up to Staudinger’s for perfect insects.” See also Thomas Bean to William Henry Edwards, January 31, 1891, HE: “My prices are based chiefly on Staudinger’s price list.” And Will Doherty to his father, February 10, 1892, JMH: “Staudinger’s price list is the basis of my contract with Doncaster, so that henceforth I can estimate the value of any of my catch with some closeness.”

  35. Staudinger to Isaac Martindale, July 9, 1892, Martindale Papers, Collection 533, Archives and Manuscripts, Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, and Andreas Bang-Haas to Skinner, June 26, 1891, HS-ANS, Collection 533.

  36. Strecker to Staudinger (draft), July 16, 1894, HS-FM.

  37. Strecker to Staudinger (draft), March 4, 1889, HS-FM.

  38. Obituary, “Dr. Otto Staudinger,” Entomologische Zeitung (Stettin: Entomologischen Vereins zu Stettin, 1900), 389–95.

  39. For Staudinger’s trade with the museum, see, for example, Staudinger and Bang-Haas to the director of the Königlich Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, March 24, 1890; October 14, 1893; November 1, 1893; November 10, 1893; October 6, 1894; March 8, 1895; January 12, 1897; February 26, 1897; March 20, 1897; March 23, 1897; October 28, 1897; March 24, 1898; and March 24, 1898, MNK. Most of these letters contain records of the money made, reaching into the thousands of marks. There are also several bills of sale in the museum’s records. I would like to thank Hannalore Landsdorf, the chief archivist at this museum, for insight on Staudinger’s favored relationship with the German king.

  40. “Codizill to the last will and testament of Otto Karl Heinrich Richard Staudinger,” August 29, 1894, Staudinger Papers, MNK. Again, thanks to Hannalore Landsdorf for insight into the historical significance of this codicil.

  41. “I agree with you,” Fred Tepper, the American collector, wrote Strecker in 1876, “that Staudinger’s list is rather poor in exotics.” Tepper to Strecker, January 4, 1876, HS-FM.

  42. Staudinger to Henry Stainton, January 12, 1880; and, on the butterfly auction, Staudinger to Stainton, October 1, 1880, Stainton Papers, NHM-LONDON.

  43. See “Coleoptera—Liste VII (October 1888)”; “Coleoptera—Liste VIII (October 1889)”; “Conchylien—Preisliste Nr. II (November 1888)”; “Preisliste über Hymenopotera, Dipteren, Hemipteren, Orthopteren und Neuropteren (June 1890)”; and “Preisliste Frasstücke und biologische Objecte (December 1893).” I h
ave seen these lists in the archives of Berlin’s natural history museum (MNK).

  44. Staudinger to Stainton, October 13, 1873, Stainton Papers, NHM-LONDON. Ribbe was an excellent naturalist, ambitious enough to leave the parent firm in 1877 to create his own business. His son, Carl, captured several new birdwing species on trips to the Malay Archipelago, mailing them to his father to put on the market. In the mountains of the Moluccas, just west of New Guinea, he netted seven thousand butterflies, later boasting that it took Alfred Russel Wallace eight years to get a mere thirteen thousand. See Ribbe to Strecker, July 17, 1878, and October 10, 1879, HS-FM (my translation). On Ribbe’s departure from Staudinger’s firm, see Ribbe to Strecker, July 8, 1877, and Neumoegen to Strecker, Feburary 5, 1877, HS-FM.

  45. These figures are taken from a full run of Staudinger’s catalogs, which cover the period from 1870 to 1901 and can be found in the Herman Strecker Papers, HS-FM, and in the William Holland Papers, WH-HSWP.

  46. Stainton to Staudinger, September 26, 1880 (draft letter); and Stainton to Staudinger, January 12, 1880, Stainton Papers, NHM-LONDON.

  47. See Henry Skinner to Strecker, April 14, 1893, HS-FM.

  48. Staudinger to Stainton, September 22, 1880, Stainton Papers, NHM-LONDON.