Abstract
AN aquarium is put to its legitimate use when it is made the home of natural history exhibitions, and any attempt to rescue one from the too dominant sway of the showman deserves every support at the hands of science. The Entomological Exhibition, the opening of which at the Royal Aquarium we noticed last week, is also quite a novelty, though it is the outcome in a particular branch of the idea that led to the Loan Exhibition of Scientific Apparatus at South Kensington; as in that case the exhibitors are induced by no hope of prizes, but merely from the love of their science to lend their treasures. One learns from such an exhibition as this how much genuine love for natural history exists amongst men whose daily lives are devoted to manual labour, and that there are those who live within sound of Bow Bells, who make as good a use of their more limited opportunities as Edward in Banffshire. Here is a Mr. Machin, compositor by trade, whose long day's work has not prevented him from collecting and rearing a magnificent series of crepuscular and nocturnal moths, shown in twenty beautifully-arranged cases and accurately named; and the collections of some others are scarcely less noticeable in this respect. But apart from the interest attaching to some of the exhibitors, the material brought together affords an opportunity both to the entomologist proper and to the general naturalist not often to be met with. The greater portion of the whole exhibition is perhaps inevitably taken up with British lepidoptera, but these are not, as might be feared, an endless multitude of specimens of no special interest beyond their rarity and beauty, but are made to teach as well as please. Lord Walsingham, for example, shows the larvæ, pupæ, and imagines of nearly 370 species with the plants on which they occur—so that we have their complete life-history so far as it can possibly be represented to us. This, perhaps, from its scientific character and the beautiful means of preservation adopted, is the most interesting to the general naturalist, but there are others more limited, but scarcely less instructive—as those shown by the Messrs. Adams, in which the usual parasites are included in the series with each insect. Other instructive collections are those which illustrate the varieties of a single species; such is the set of specimens of Colias edusa, exhibited by Mr. Harper, a grand series showing insensible passages between perfectly distinct colourings. The influence of climate on colour is well illustrated in the melanic northern varieties of several species of moths, which are usually of a lighter colour in the south of England, the two varieties being placed side by side in the Yorkshire collections, and the results of selective breeding in the same direction in the photographs, unfortunately not specimens, of the common gooseberry moth, varying from nearly white to almost entirely dark. The moths and butterflies of the fen districts, which are now becoming so scarce, are represented by a very large collection by Mr. Earn. But one of the most interesting objects is a large white close-set web, in appearance like a cloth—some eight feet by four feet, spun by the larvae of a moth, Ephestia elutella, that feeds on chicory. It is a portion only of a larger web, six times the size, formed on the walls and ceiling of a chicory warehouse in York, by the incessant marching to and fro of the well-fed larvcæ. The threads composing it are less than 1/6000 inch in diameter, and as they are nearly contiguous and eight or ten deep; the portion exhibited represents about 4,000 miles of their wanderings. When twisted into a rope, it has been made to support a weightof 561bs. The foreign Lepidoptera also figure largely, and are naturally attractive from their beauty, and in General Ramsay's cases from Nepaul, for their rarity. This portion of the series, however, is chiefly valuable for the illustrations of protective mimicry which it affords. Admirable specimens of the leaf butterfly, Kallima inachis, with the varying tints of their under surfaces, are in Gen. Ramsay's collection, and Mr. Swanzy has a grand series specially arranged of Diademas and Papiliones mimicking—some in the females and some in both sexes—the nauseous smelling members of the Danaidæ and Acraidæ. Similar series are shown by Rev. J. A. Walker and Mr. Weir. The extraordinary differences between male and female in some butterflies is well illustrated by Mr. Briggs' collection of Lycænas.
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Entomology at the Royal Aquarium . Nature 17, 402–403 (1878). https://doi.org/10.1038/017402d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/017402d0