The Butterfly Hunter's Guide & Price Lists - together with Collection of 56 Specimens
Wellesley, Massachusetts: Denton Bros. 1902. A fascinating look into the collection of an amateur lepidopterologist. Here, a copy of The Butterfly Hunter's Guide (9.5" by 7", [20] pp., original printed wrappers) is accompanied by two (2) contemporary German advertising circulars (11.5" by 8.75") for mail-order butterfly specimens, as well as over 50 specimens, individually numbered and categorized.
There are four discrete groupings of specimens (Brazil, India, Africa, Mexico) as well as a curious fifth category, containing 17 unidentified specimens preserved in plastic and in printed envelopes that read: "From our Children to their Benefactors. Formosa is famous for its beautiful butterflies and we enjoy collecting them. Moreover. We found a nice way to send our beautiful butterflies to our benefactors. The plastics industry, one of the fastest growing industries on on the island fixed out butterflies in durable material. We helped them and they help us to send a small token of our gratitude to our dear benefactors." Presumably, these specimens were collected on the island of Taiwan in the early 1900s, and sent as tokens to benefactors of a local school, which we have been sadly unable to positively identify. Some of the specimens are rather beautiful, and have been preserved with scraps of lace or leaves.
6 copies of this edition of the Guide on OCLC (Feb. 2022). Very good to fair. Some light toning, dust soiling to Guide, wrapper loose;.
Price: $1,400.00
Item #26014555