Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on May 22, 2015 21:21:08 GMT
There are quite a few more of these to acquire on my next visit in july.
|
|
|
Post by nomad on May 23, 2015 3:58:05 GMT
There are it seems two types of historic specimens, ones that were captured in the field by famous collectors, and those that came from famous collectors collections. While both are very valuable to have, because of their historic interest, If I had a choice, I would prefer the former. Then there are specimens such as unique aberrations that are famous in themselves, many of these were taken by no one famous that found their way into famous collections or have passed through many of the latter. Also of great value are specimens taken by the fathers of Entomology. Any of those mentioned are wonderful to see, thank you for showing them here.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on May 23, 2015 12:32:41 GMT
To be honest my friends "bug room" is so vast that it would take at least 3 months to examine every specimen and it's data that I have never been able to do it as there is never enough time with field trips in the day and light trapping at night, I know for a fact there are a lot more historical and old specimens in there and I will make a point in july to seek them out.
|
|
|
Post by Adam Cotton on May 23, 2015 15:34:35 GMT
Here's a quick pic of what is probably the oldest specimen in my collection. It's Parides chabrias from Ecuador, collected in 1879. Adam.
|
|
|
Post by Adam Cotton on May 23, 2015 15:35:42 GMT
Here's the close up of the original label:
|
|
|
Post by Adam Cotton on May 23, 2015 20:24:04 GMT
Doing a little online research I found out that Clarence Buckley was a zoologist who collected in the Andes. I found a reference to a paper by Dick Vane-Wright (Vane-Wright R.I. 1991. A portrait of Clarence Buckley, zoologist. The Linnean 7(3): 30-33) and have e-mailed to ask if he has a pdf of the paper. Maybe Nomad knows something about him already.
Adam.
|
|
|
Post by deliasfanatic on May 23, 2015 20:48:53 GMT
I'd assume that he is the namesake of Asterope buckleyi and Prepona praeneste buckleyana.
|
|
|
Post by nomad on May 24, 2015 5:42:20 GMT
Doing a little online research I found out that Clarence Buckley was a zoologist who collected in the Andes. I found a reference to a paper by Dick Vane-Wright (Vane-Wright R.I. 1991. A portrait of Clarence Buckley, zoologist. The Linnean 7(3): 30-33) and have e-mailed to ask if he has a pdf of the paper. Maybe Nomad knows something about him already. Adam. Sorry Adam. I know little about Clarence Buckley. So I am looking forward to knowing more.
|
|
|
Post by Adam Cotton on May 24, 2015 18:10:46 GMT
Dick Vane-Wright very kindly sent me a pdf as requested. The Clarence Buckley story is rather interesting, and there is still a lot that is not known about him. I am reproducing the text of the short paper here for educational purposes:
A Portrait of Clarence Buckley, Zoologist Collector of South American butterflies, mammals and birds, 1868-1878
Clarence Buckley collected in Ecuador, Bolivia and possibly Colombia during the late 1860s and 1870s. Much (if not all) of his butterfly material (well over 5000 specimens from Ecuador) passed to William Chapman Hewitson, a successful professional surveyor and an outstanding English amateur lepidopterist. Hewitson was not only responsible for the description of many hundreds of butterfly species new to science, but also for the provision of some of the most accurate watercolour paintings and lithographic plates of exotic butterflies published during the mid-19th century. In particular, his paintings for his own series Illustrations of New Species of Exotic Butterflies and Illustrations of Diurnal Lepidoptera, together with his 86 plates for the monumental Genera of Diurnal Lepidoptera (by E. Doubleday & J. O. Westwood, 1846-52) have earned Hewitson an immortal place in the annals of entomology. Hewitson, assumed to be a 'chequebook collector', bequeathed his entire collection of 24625 specimens to the British Museum (vide W. F. Kirby's Catalogue of the collection of ... the late William Chapman Hewitson, 1879). The collection contained, it is believed, most if not all of Buckley's butterfly material, including the type specimens of the 200 or so new species described from Buckley specimens. This material remains part of the world's most outstanding butterfly collection. Hewitson was a creationist who firmly rejected the ideas of Darwin and his followers. "Each species [is] in itself perfect and as it first came from the hands of the Creator; ... if [ I ] could believe in the transmutation of species or that there was one grain of truth in the chaotic jumble of Mr Darwin, [my] life-long pleasure and occupation would be taken from [me]", wrote Hewitson in the introduction to one of his works. In another place he refers to "the childish guesses of those of the Darwinian school". As a result of such convictions, it was Hewitson's habit to show little regard for exact details of collectors or provenance in his records and descriptions. In the case of the Buckley material, however, things are a little different. He first described the bulk of Buckley's new butterflies in six rare, privately published pamphlets: Equatorial Lepidoptera Collected by Mr Buckley (part 1, December 2 1869; part II, December 15 1869; part III, December 30 1869; part IV, March 10 1870; part V, April 11 1877), and Bolivian Butterfies Collected by Mr Buckley (November 1 1874 -- all of these pamphlets were reprinted in a 1972 facsimile work, Hewitson on Butterflies, published by E.W. Classey): Subsequently, Hewitson published paintings of many of these species, and some additional ones, in his various Illustrations. Hewitson was evidently much impressed by Buckley's efforts: "I do not, of course, compare the collection of Mr Buckley with the ... collections or Bates and Wallace ... but I do not hesitate in saying, that during the twenty-five years I have been a student of these things, no such single collection (either for its perfection or extent) has been brought to Europe". For his first Ecuador collection, which was made during the period July 1868 to June 1869, Buckley was absent from England for 14 months. Setting out from Guayaquil on 5th July, he had to cross the Andes to reach his objective, the Amazon slopes. Despite "almost constant rain" he "contrived to bring home with him 5000 butterflies, most of them as fresh and beautiful as if they had been reared from caterpillars at home". The furthest point reached was St. Rosas, on the Rio Napo. Other localities included Riobamba, BaƱos, St. Ines, Canelos, Sarayacu, Curaray, Rio Rotuno and Jorge. Collecting was not exclusively by net - Hewitson notes that a particularly rare Morpho was "knocked down by Mr Buckley's hat". At the beginning of the 1874 paper describing many of the new species sent by Buckley from Bolivia, Hewitson notes that "Mr Buckley's Collection, like the larger one which he brought me from Ecuador, from which I have now described 154 new species, is in the most perfect condition, contains ... many things of great rarity and beauty [including] a fine series of the splendid Morpho godartii ... a specimen of which in the collection of Mr Salvin first determined him to go out and seek it". Osbert Salvin was one of the leading naturalists of the Victorian age (his collection of butterflies was also bequeathed to the British Museum). In the short preface to the 1877 paper, Hewitson notes that "It is now nearly eight years since Mr Buckley brought home his celebrated collection of butterflies from Ecuador. Since then he has been wandering about Bolivia, and is now returned to his old productive quarters ... he visited a new district which he calls Jima ... where he collected more than two thousand butterflies, but, being unwilling to risk the whole [to the post?], has selected from them and sent me those only which he believes to be rare or new". Hewitson died the following year, on 28 May 1878. Of his mammals and birds, many if not all of these also passed to the BM. In the 1906 History of the Collections contained in the Natural History Departments of the British Museum, volume 2, there is a single entry in the Zoology section: "Buckley (Clarence). [1872]. 97 Mammals from Ecuador. Purchased". Several of these became type specimens of new species described by Gray, and presumably date from the 1868-69 expedition. A paper by Oldfield Thomas (Proceedings of the Zoological Society for 1880, 393) refers to a further lot of 141 mammals "brought from Ecuador by Mr Clarence Buckley, together with a large number of birds and other animals obtained by him during his four years' residence in that country". Apparently the specimens were "all in an excellent state of preservation" - further testimony of Buckley's skill as a zoologist. These mammals came from Sarayacu, the Copataza River, Andoas, Intac and Pallatanga, and appear to have been collected by Buckley between July 1877 and September 1878. Beyond this, we seem to know almost nothing about this evidently intrepid and highly skilled young zoologist who, soon after the great adventures of Henry Walter Bates on the Amazon, penetrated deep into the jungles of the Amazon headwaters that Bates failed to reach. Buckley's name does not appear in Gilbert's extensive work on deceased entomologists, nor in the updated card catalogues maintained at The Natural History Museum. There are six register entries of insects presented to or purchased by the British Museum from Buckley, the first being 1867.38 (three longhorn beetles from India), the last being 1880.102 (38 moths from Muzo, Colombia). Despite the significance of his contributions to Victorian lepidopterology and mammalogy, we know nothing of his date and place of birth, his upbringing, education, or where and when he died. From Hewitson's comments we may presume that Clarence Buckley was an Englishman, but even that is not certain. Perhaps Buckley died in the Andes, soon after Hewitson's own death. Clearly he was still actively collecting in September 1878, over ten years after he first set foot in South America, and apparently he was still alive in 1880. The origin of this evocative painting - for it surely is an authentic rendering of Buckley - is also obscure. Measuring 10.75 x 8.75 inches, it is unsigned. Pasted to the back, in a heavy Victorian hand on pale blue paper, is a little ink-written note: "C. Buckley in collecting costume during his collecting discoveries in Ecuador. Many new specimens of insects bear his name". Conceivably the painting is by Hewitson himself but, in the absence of evidence as to Hewitson's ability in oils or portraiture, this is unbridled speculation. Another possibility is that it was commissioned by Hewitson, for his house at Oatlands, Walton-on-Thames, in Surrey. Callithea buckleyi, one of the most beautiful butterflies in the world, was so named by Hewitson from a specimen collected by Buckley on the Rio Rotuno, Ecuador. It is gratifying to have some record at last, in the form of this charming portrait, of a man who did much to gather knowledge about the life of our planet. It would be doubly gratifying if this discovery could lead to further information about the excellent but mysterious Clarence Buckley. The portrait of Buckley is currently offered for sale by a London dealer. R. I. VANE-WRIGHT
|
|
|
Post by nomad on May 25, 2015 6:33:40 GMT
Adam thank for transcribing the article on Clarence Buckley, an interesting read.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 2, 2015 19:51:10 GMT
ew computer so not sure how the images will turn out but this is papilio androgeus from 1903.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 2, 2015 19:52:20 GMT
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 2, 2015 19:54:17 GMT
Papilio aegeus female, no date on this one but I'm guessing around the same time as the label is the same, pre 1925 for certain.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2015 14:38:02 GMT
|
|
|
Post by nomad on Jun 18, 2015 17:29:48 GMT
I did not know Fawcett was a butterfly collector. That's what I like about this hobby, you can learn something new every day. I read Exploration Fawcett many years ago and remember he was always looking for a Lost City, his equivalent to El Dorado and was thrilled and fascinated by his book. I must read it again. You are certainly adding a lot of specimens to your collection dunc, caught by some pretty famous people. Great stuff!!
|
|