The World's first Butterfly Farmer. H.W. Head.
Aug 8, 2017 11:41:23 GMT
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Post by nomad on Aug 8, 2017 11:41:23 GMT
The World's first Butterfly Farmer. H.W. Head.
The story of Harold Walter Head (1865-1947) is not only that of the World's first butterfly farmer but also one of a person who managed to rise above the poverty of his youth and achieve a certain amount of success through industrious hard work.
Harold Head was born in the City of Leeds in Yorkshire of a poor family and at just nine years old he was sent out to work. His parents instilled in their son a love of nature and in his free time Harold started to collect butterflies and moths.
Some of the local species that Harold collected were sold to supplement his meagre income. Eventually he was able to set up the a butterfly farm in 1884 at Dandier street in Scarborough, a town situated on the coast of North Yorkshire. This involved a difficult livelihood for one man, collecting until the early hours of the morning, setting and rearing in accommodation that was really unsuitable to the task.
From adverts placed in the entomological journals, Harold Head soon had a steady clientele who were ready to buy the rarities from his breeding cages and his butterfly farm prospered. However, both at the time and later, certain accusations were leveled against Harold Head of continuing the dubious practice of including continental rarities among his list of British species for sale. It would take the establishment of Leonard Woods Newman (1873- 1949) and his Butterfly Farm at Bexley, Kent during 1894, to once again establish the complete integrity of those that sought to make a living by selling insects.
During 1907, Harold Head moved his butterfly Farm from Scarborough to the nearby village of Burniston. Here he bought an old stone cottage with large garden comprising of four acres situated at the rear of the building. He planted all the necessary trees, shrubs and plants and tended them. The garden looked a strange sight with hundreds of sleeves for the rearing stock. Here and there were scores of breeding cages all made by himself, he managed to do all his own carpentry, building and metal work and even printed his own price lists. During the winter months he established an Honesty Plant business and had bleaching and dyeing vats on his premises.
Perhaps Harold Head's greatest achievement in breeding butterflies was his establishment of a yellow strain of Pieris napi. In 1909, Harold Head received a single female pale yellow aberration of P. napi from a teacher at Tullybeg School in Donegal and after many years breeding he produced a pure strain named ab. citronea Frohawk, 1928. This aberration is sometimes referred to as ab. sulphurea Schoyen, 1885. The year before Harold died, he had established a stock of a new banded form of Pieris napi. In 1951, L.H. Newman in his Britain's Festival year price list was still advertising the larvae and pupae of Head's famous P. napi strains with those of his fathers, L.W. Newman's white and albino forms. These beautiful forms of P. napi still grace the cabinets of British collections.
The butterfly farm supplied not only British lepidoptera but among the many foreign species were the large exotic silk-moths. Harold Head managed to breed a dozen different moth hybrids. Red letter days on the butterfly farm were when a rare aberration emerged, instead of a few shillings these might being in several pounds. Harold Head tried unsuccessfully for many years to produce an all black strain of the Garden Tiger Moth, Arctia caja.
The Amateur Entomologist Volume 9, published in 1951, Practical Methods and Hints For Lepidopterists was dedicated to H.W. Head. The editor of that journal, Trevor Trought wrote "His boundless energy and capacity for work were an inspiration to his many friends and an object lesson to his juniors. His vast knowledge of the living creatures and his experience were a bottomless well for all who sought his advice and help. Somehow he managed to never be too busy to assist the genuine naturalist and gladly showed his favourite collecting haunts and methods. Kindly and hospitable, he was shy and retiring and disinclined towards publicity, a factor which militated against him in a commercial sense. He was from the start an enthusiastic supporter of the AES, with whose aims he was fundamentally in sympathy. We shall not look upon his like again".
Below. Specimens of Pieris napi bred by Harold Head. Bristol City Museum collections.
.
Below. Female specimen of ab. citronea Frohawk, 1928.
Below. A female specimen of Parasemia plantaginis ab rufa Tutt 1897. H.W. Head., Scarborough 1904. J.C. & C.W. Dale collection. OUMNH.
Below. A specimen of Zygaena filipendulae stephensi ab. aurantia Tutt. H.W. Head. Scarborough 1904. J.C. & C.W. Dale collection. OUMNH.
References.
Anon. (1912) The Kingston Daily Freeman. Entomologist in Yorkshire Starts an Industry. An article taken by that newspaper from an issue of the Yorkshire Evening Post.
Lister R. (2010) Burniston to Ravenscar Through Time. Amberley Publishing.
Newman L. H. (1967) Living with Butterflies. London.
Trought T. (1951) Editor. The Amateur Entomologist. Practical Methods and Hints for Lepidopterists, Vol 9.
The story of Harold Walter Head (1865-1947) is not only that of the World's first butterfly farmer but also one of a person who managed to rise above the poverty of his youth and achieve a certain amount of success through industrious hard work.
Harold Head was born in the City of Leeds in Yorkshire of a poor family and at just nine years old he was sent out to work. His parents instilled in their son a love of nature and in his free time Harold started to collect butterflies and moths.
Some of the local species that Harold collected were sold to supplement his meagre income. Eventually he was able to set up the a butterfly farm in 1884 at Dandier street in Scarborough, a town situated on the coast of North Yorkshire. This involved a difficult livelihood for one man, collecting until the early hours of the morning, setting and rearing in accommodation that was really unsuitable to the task.
From adverts placed in the entomological journals, Harold Head soon had a steady clientele who were ready to buy the rarities from his breeding cages and his butterfly farm prospered. However, both at the time and later, certain accusations were leveled against Harold Head of continuing the dubious practice of including continental rarities among his list of British species for sale. It would take the establishment of Leonard Woods Newman (1873- 1949) and his Butterfly Farm at Bexley, Kent during 1894, to once again establish the complete integrity of those that sought to make a living by selling insects.
During 1907, Harold Head moved his butterfly Farm from Scarborough to the nearby village of Burniston. Here he bought an old stone cottage with large garden comprising of four acres situated at the rear of the building. He planted all the necessary trees, shrubs and plants and tended them. The garden looked a strange sight with hundreds of sleeves for the rearing stock. Here and there were scores of breeding cages all made by himself, he managed to do all his own carpentry, building and metal work and even printed his own price lists. During the winter months he established an Honesty Plant business and had bleaching and dyeing vats on his premises.
Perhaps Harold Head's greatest achievement in breeding butterflies was his establishment of a yellow strain of Pieris napi. In 1909, Harold Head received a single female pale yellow aberration of P. napi from a teacher at Tullybeg School in Donegal and after many years breeding he produced a pure strain named ab. citronea Frohawk, 1928. This aberration is sometimes referred to as ab. sulphurea Schoyen, 1885. The year before Harold died, he had established a stock of a new banded form of Pieris napi. In 1951, L.H. Newman in his Britain's Festival year price list was still advertising the larvae and pupae of Head's famous P. napi strains with those of his fathers, L.W. Newman's white and albino forms. These beautiful forms of P. napi still grace the cabinets of British collections.
The butterfly farm supplied not only British lepidoptera but among the many foreign species were the large exotic silk-moths. Harold Head managed to breed a dozen different moth hybrids. Red letter days on the butterfly farm were when a rare aberration emerged, instead of a few shillings these might being in several pounds. Harold Head tried unsuccessfully for many years to produce an all black strain of the Garden Tiger Moth, Arctia caja.
The Amateur Entomologist Volume 9, published in 1951, Practical Methods and Hints For Lepidopterists was dedicated to H.W. Head. The editor of that journal, Trevor Trought wrote "His boundless energy and capacity for work were an inspiration to his many friends and an object lesson to his juniors. His vast knowledge of the living creatures and his experience were a bottomless well for all who sought his advice and help. Somehow he managed to never be too busy to assist the genuine naturalist and gladly showed his favourite collecting haunts and methods. Kindly and hospitable, he was shy and retiring and disinclined towards publicity, a factor which militated against him in a commercial sense. He was from the start an enthusiastic supporter of the AES, with whose aims he was fundamentally in sympathy. We shall not look upon his like again".
Below. Specimens of Pieris napi bred by Harold Head. Bristol City Museum collections.
.Below. Female specimen of ab. citronea Frohawk, 1928.
Below. A female specimen of Parasemia plantaginis ab rufa Tutt 1897. H.W. Head., Scarborough 1904. J.C. & C.W. Dale collection. OUMNH.
Below. A specimen of Zygaena filipendulae stephensi ab. aurantia Tutt. H.W. Head. Scarborough 1904. J.C. & C.W. Dale collection. OUMNH.
References.
Anon. (1912) The Kingston Daily Freeman. Entomologist in Yorkshire Starts an Industry. An article taken by that newspaper from an issue of the Yorkshire Evening Post.
Lister R. (2010) Burniston to Ravenscar Through Time. Amberley Publishing.
Newman L. H. (1967) Living with Butterflies. London.
Trought T. (1951) Editor. The Amateur Entomologist. Practical Methods and Hints for Lepidopterists, Vol 9.
. There is practically nothing about H.W. Head on the web or in books, so an interesting but forgotten Personality of entomology to research. Running a successful butterfly farm for around 40 years, speaks volumes for Harold Head.
