Cape Breton's Magazine

rare in collections. I don't think you need worry about people collecting them out. I don't think you'll encourage that many peo? ple to begin collecting in any case. The first serious collecting I did on Cape Breton was in 1928. And my methods haven't changed really. See, people have been col? lecting butterflies and moths for a long time • 300 years anyv/ay. The methods of hand? ling have changed a little bit. The pins have gotten better and longer. They used to use cactus spines to pin the insects on. Methods of preservation are better. But lit? tle has changed. To get them you trap them. For moths you use light traps. And for moths a recent advantage is the discovery that moths can see ultraviolet light. Which we can't. And to them it appears far brighter. One method, you put the light in front of a sheet--then you just go out there and pick off what you want. (How do you get the wings spread like that?) Well, you have what we call spreading boards • two boards with a groove in between them • and the boards are set up at a slight angle (the wings will rest on these) and down the middle there's some soft material like balsa or cork. And you put the insect in there with the body in the groove. Then you fold the wings down and hold them in place with strips of paper or sheets of glass, whatever. Then they dry. Depends on the weather and depends on the size of the insect • a small insect, hot dry weather, you can do it in three days. A big thing like this (Polyphemus) and damp weather, it would take you a couple of weeks. And when they dry, they stay that way. Always there is a convention. The insect would never look like this in life. They don't spread their wings that far. But to see as much as possible of the wing • and since they classify them on the wing pattern • you spread them until the hind margin of the front wing is more or less straight across. Purely convention. Here's the Rosy Maple Moth (Anisota rubicun- da). He's got a yellow body, with a pink un? derneath, and then a very fair yellow and pink on the body of the wing, but a real butter yellow on the body itself. It's very • ? mt'n Rosy Maple Moth, Anisota rubicunda common. You'd see this one a lot if you'd haunt the electric lights. Of course, when I was a little boy, we didn't have electric lights up here. Norman Bethune was the first fellow to put a light plant in in Baddeck. He furnished some of the stores, a couple of street lights and his garage. Boy, in those days the moths just came in by the yard there because that was the first electric lights they ever saw. And I used to come up here in June and collect at the lights. Now today this isn't a very good place to col? lect. There isn't enough variation in the food plants. All spruce. What you want is to get a place on the Margaree River some place • or Big Intervale or Lake Ainslie • a place with a much wider variety of vegeta? tion • and you'll get more. This Sphynx Moth (Sphynx gordius) pupated September 30, 1926, and emerged March 19, 1927. (How do you know?) I had it with me. I took the pupa with me to Boston. You see, the moth was bom out of an egg in Cape Breton and lived all the period of its growth as a caterpillar in a bush in Cape Breton. Then it pupated into a chrysalis or pupa stage, which is the resting stage. It neither moves nor feeds. And I took it back with me, hatched it out in Boston. The Sphynx Moth in Boston would be a lot bigger. And even bigger in Florida. They are common all over eastern North America, and there are forms all the way out to the west coast. This Sphynx Moth has its tongue out with or? chid pollen on the tongue. They fertilize orchids. I did a study once and then lost it • collecting moths and measured their Sphinx or Hummingbird Moth Wood Nymph Tiger Moth Purchases mailed anywhere in the world. LOCATED IN BADDECK, NOVA SCOTIA American Express, Chargex, Bank America, Master Charge Credit Cards Monourec Open Daily 9:00 a.m. tO 9.00 p.m. Phone 295-2786 Cape Breton hooked rugs Eskimo soapstone carvings Nova Scotia pottery by the Lorenzens Shetland sweaters 100% wool campers jackets Tartan materials, kilt skirts and suits