Norwich Bulletin Newspaper, August 6, 1914, Page 10

CaMP. OF THEENTOMOLOGISTS In ¢osTa Rrea A New Collection of More Than 200,000 Butterflies in the Na- tional Museum — A Labor of Years and the Enduring of Many Hardships — Story of the Two Men Who Perfected It—Adven- tures in the Jungle. Braved Cannibals and Tropical Disease—Dr. Schaus Rejects * Dar- win’s Theory. Do_ran ¥now the pile-built village ere the sago dealers trade— Do you know the reek of fish and wet bamboo? Do you know the sieaming stilln the orehid-scented glade When the bl bird-winged butterfiies fiap through? It s there that I ain going With my camphor, net and hoves To & gentle yellow pirate that I know— o my fittle wailing lemurs and my pyims and fiying foxes, For the Red Gods call me ont—and I must go! —Kipling. Speetal Correspondence WASHINGTON, D. C. HEN Kipling wrote his “Feet of the Young Men" he must have had In mind just such .souls as Willlam Schaus and James T. Barnes, who have just present- ed to the National Museum a collec- tion of more than two hundred thou- ®and specimens of Lepidoptera—the sci- lenflflc designation of the butterfly fam- y. * * ¥ This In itself Is an achievement of dls- tinction but what entitles the two ento- mologists to membership in the Clan of the Red Gods is that one of them, Dr. Sehaus, labored for. thirty vears to per- fect the collection and that Mr. Barnes expended half that time as his assistant while they wandered over tens of thou- sands of virgin tropical miles pursuing the muiti-colored bits of “winged rain- bows” which now Al the museum cases. Adventurous spirits in the medieval ages. before the rise of science, were forced to coritent themselves with don- ning a suit of armor, mounting a mettle- some steed and riding forth to battle, crusade or to a tilt with windmills, if nothing better offered, when the red blood ‘surged to boiling point within them. And in those hoary times the sclentist was a recluse who sat alone in his rock-hewn cell, watching through horn-rimmed spectacles while what we, in our enlightenment. now call ‘“first principles of chemistry” bubbled to" frui- tion in the great-granddaddy of all re- torts. i But the pendulum of progress has swung changes into the lives of most folks. Nowadays, save at infrequent in- tervals of war,.the lives of soldfer and saflor are, to some extent, much more safe than the daily routine of the prosaic ironworker who swings to hls hazardous vocation five hundred feet above the crowded streets of great cities; while the life of the modern prototype of the an- cient alchemist is filled- with risk, dan- ger and privation. Witness the orchid hunter. A thou- sand miles through steaming Borneo jungles, surrounded by rank fetid growths of swamp and river bed, in hourly risk from festive head-hunters, is not too sreat a price to pay for a rare blossom. Nor does the prospect of a thousand- mile jaunt over the chill Himalayan slopes daunt the plant explorer, if at the end of his journey he can find a tree, shrub, or root which will add to- the avallable food supply of the world. * * * So with Schaus ana Barnes, who have devoted the better parts of thelr lives to the waste places of the world so that something may be added to obscure points in the sum total of knowledge re- garding the butterflies and moths of North, Central and South America. To most of the visitors who will come and gaze at the mounted specimens of lapidoptera in the National Museum the exhibit will perhaps mean nothing ‘more & Jiorseous riot ot vivid, subdued delicate colorings on the QF WHICH AREVALUED silk-thin wings stretched in scientific preservation, Perhaps a few of them, in whose memories still linger their days in entomological classrooms, will perceive that sclence has made great strides in the cataloguing of extant species moths and butterflies But it is safe to predict that prac- tically none of them will read in the carefully labeled cases the real human story that the insects tell, and realize that the two sclentists who prepared them were men of as much mettle as any of the adventurers who with force of arms have penetrated the South American jungles sirce the days of Pizarro and Cortez. Tn a small way. the price paid in human effort for these butterflies may be tabulated. Forty-five years from the lives of these two men must lead the list, and the significance of this cannot be dimmed by the fact that each of them is heart and soul a scientist and that he gladly gave uy his time and energy to make this collection his greatest work. * * * Most of this time the two men spent on trails unknown to the careless foot of the white man. For months on end they camped each night at a different spot in wild, subtropic wastes where each camp site was painful replicg of the one just left. Tropic-days on end the; poled or paddled sluggish rivers in British Guiana, ever pursuing the elusive winged prey, until ¢hey;had pegetrated into the couniry of canni~ bals so far that their native guid would go no farther. Tropical disease, in all its forms, swept down upon them to turn them from their appointed tasks. They Were the victims of a scourge of sores. bred in pest holes of the swamps; again their hands split to the bone be- neath -the poison injected by certain forms of pernicious larvae. Fever in all ‘its weird tropical forms claimed them for its own, and every three. weess fo mapy. weary years, after the “‘per- Dnicious'* fever first attacked him, Barnes knew the bone-racking pain of the re- current mal Yet, undaunted, they fought on until, disease weakened and gaunt, they were forced time after time to “&o outside’ and rid themselves of the weakening maladies. When they would venture from their eamps, it often happened that in returning they would find the padded track of a jaguar that had dogged them silently and evilly from cover. Hardly a day during their whole ex- perience were they free from the dan- gers of earthquake, minor shocks be- ing frequently experienced, and in 1910 they barely escaped from Costa Rica in time to avoid the cataclysm which devasted the country and cost thousands of lives. Ordinarily they traveled with no com- missary, save small packages of salt, coffee and sugar. depending entirely upon. Barnes' ability as a hunter to supply their food. which generally consisted of wild pig, baked toucan, roast young parrot or swallow stew with such edible roots, berries and fruits as they could obtain. * * * Sometimes the pursiit of rare moths would take them into the jungles at blackess midnight to snare certain species that fiy conly after that hour, and at an altitude of from thirty to forty feet. | And of one of these species, the Semiramis, a single specimen of which recently brought £50 at a London auc- a A THE SEMIRAMIS, SINGLE SPECTIMENS myriad |} An 4250, tion, Dr. Schaus succeeded in obtaining half a score. Again, that burnished-winged species, the Thecla Cypria, would lead them into almost impenetrable jungles, where the threat of poison snake was ever present, or the Pteronymia species. would lure them to the very craters of active voi- canoes, such as Poas, in Costa Rica. or Cape de Perrote, near Orizaba, Mexico And this, in part. is_the price these two men paid so that Dr. Schaus might | | perfect his collection and add a few JE PTERONYMIA Iounp Asout THE CRATERS O thousand hitherto unknown forms of but- | terfly life to scientific knowledse. Although Dr., Schaus is an American from_the sround up, he received much of his early education in continental cap- itals, and as a boy in Parls became in- terested In entomology. While yet a| young man he took his first trip io the | tropics in search of new specles of lep!- doptera. “It was not so much the study of but- terfly life which lured me to the tropics,” declared Dr. Schaus in describing his ex CANOES PoasVorLcawo, COSTARICA, AROUND WHOSE CRATER THE PTERONYMIA ARETCUND. perfences, “as at first hand, winlan theory protection by it was a desire to study In the jungles, the Dar- of natural selection. or mimicry. 1 went into the jungles a firm believer in that theory I have come from them after thirty | years' experience in them, rejecting that theory, as well as the theory of the sur- vival of the fittest “It is not always the fittest which sur- vives; sometimes there is a remarkable element of ehance in the whole proceed- ing. and as to protective coloration in in- sects, I think the truth comes nearer be- ing that some insects have offensive col- oration, which permits them to creep upon their prey unnoticed * * * My first trip to the tropics took me to Mexico in 1881. 1 remained there for five years. but, aside from collecting the forms of lepidoptera already known to exist there, 1 made little progress. There | Mexico, then, no electric lights, | were in and that is the greatest lure to moths that we know. tive the tropical moth is to certain rays of light. You may find hundreds of them around one arc light. while there will be none about the light standing but a few feet away “In 1889 1 returned to the troplcs, this time to Brazil, making the then unusual trip, through the dense forests which strefch back of Rio to San Paulo, and it was there that 1 had my real introduction | to tropical fevers. It was our old friend ‘Yellow Jack’ that time “Repeated short trips followed this one vear in Jamaica and another in Cuba just after the Spanish-American war and before the occupation ces It was about that time that Mr joined me. and after covering all of the smalier West Indies, we went to the Guianas.” Dr. Schaus is modest to the point of reticence upon his adventures. but he ad- mits that the trip into British Guiana | was perhaps the most perilous one which he has ever taken. At that time a gold rush was on in British Guiana and had Changed. When Represent- ative Kahn of Cal- Hornia was a young man he de- T veloped the rasn|tary. When he had been in prison a few | ft of delv .. | months, his wife, wtih five kide drageing habit of delving in- | ;"o heels, went to the judee about a to theatricals occa-| pettion for the man's pardon. sionally, according _“But, my dear madam.” exclaimed thel fo the story that is, judge. “taat is impossible. Wt _was olns the rounds]a clear case of theft—there is no doubt in Eolng the rounds |y “Word hut that vour husband stole | these days. the meat. Why should he be pardoned?” | His powers Oof| The woman hushed the fretting baby. | eriticism were|wived a young hopefuls nose cied | and he was | Johnny on the hand for playing with the | arewst, ':,“‘ urged to | Judse’s in stand. then whined: “Why, | Iraaent Y j Jedge, that is the very reason T want| join with TiSIN&{ by’ hardoned—you see, we are out of| young amateur authors in the prepara-| meat again.” { tion of thair efforts. 3 S One day Kahn and an author were sit- Paying His Bill. | ting together,while they beheld the pe: formers stumbling through the author’s Senator Hughes latest effort. There is no question about of - New Jersey | it—that cempany was bad. started’ his, profes- | ver mind,” said Kahn, consolingly sional life in the haven’t changed the show, the| town of Paterdon. way professionala do. G And one of the ‘Ol yes, they have! replied the author nhioa f maodily. I wrote it for a comedy and ST N o o | they've ‘turned it into a tragedy!” | of his career hap- pened - soon after | Needed More Meat. he had hung out his shingle Senator James| It seems that Hamilton Lewis of | there was in the Tilinois is a good | place a man whose story teller and al- | lazy habits had ways enlivens his | given him a bad campaign spceches | name, 8o that preity much. everything { by a witty tale.|that went wrong was laid on this same One of the best he|Sam Brown. One dav_a wealthy man ever got off was|wearing a handsome diamond pin went | during @ celebra- | into a saloon for refreshments; and as he tion in which he|leaned over thé eounter he noticed that was the principal|{ Sam was-standing very close. On leav- speaker. And theling the plac: he at once missed the pin narrative ran as{an. had Sam arrested follows: Sam retained Hughes as his attorney. | It - seems that! Protesting his innocence, Sam so wrought | there was a country neighborhood which f on Hughes fecling that the latter went | to the complainant and assured the man v;.d been troubled a great deal by thebts| 12 the, ToMITE el A A nocent of the rom the farmer's meat houses. Hams.{inert. But the man was obdurate bacon and fat sides disappeared regu-| When Hughes returned to Sam with the larly every few days. S0 they engaged a | man's statements, explaining how con- detective, who vincing were the facts against him, Sam # . “m"“"":‘:ded o ameaan | with tears in his eves againsawore that SthaRe MRS Dare ol e earmarks of | o had never seen the pin and wept at guilt. Hughes’' having ever doubted his inno- After a long trial he was convieted and | cence. sentenced to several years ia the péniten- The trial camé off at the set time.| e e | : i. attracted all the wild outlaw souls of that .part of the world For two weeks they pushed up the Marrone river in small steamers, he and Mr. Barnes traveling upon bllls of lading as “barrels,” nassengers before that time being pretty well unknown. and then at the rapids which opposed them thev took to cances and continued up the shallow tropleal river. * - * “It was like going into the heart of Africa,” Mr. Barnes deciared. ““The coum- try is peopled almost exclusively with | bush negroes apparentiy not a day re- | moved from their own native jungles. It is peculiar how sensi-| They live in kralls, as the African blacks | do; worship fetishes and employ the most { barbarous lngo 1 have ever heard—a | mongrel patols made up of ‘their own tongue freely interspersed with French, | Portuguese, Dutch and English.” Then back to Mexico for eighteen months went the two entomological ad- | venturers. His first trip. made on mule- back, took Dr. Schaus through the state | of Vera Cruz. This time they specialized | principally in Salina Cruz | ¥“Bandits?” asked Dr. Schaus, when in- | terrogated as to whether he had run | foul of any of that breed in Mexico. | “Yes—and no. It was this way: Mr Barnes and | were on our way lo Jalapa | with one Indian servant when we heard that bandits were infesting the old Mex- |ico City roadway, over which we must | pa So Barnes, with his rifle, and [ rode ahead, the Indian servant armed | with a shotzun, making a rear guard for |us. AN that day we passed through | bowider-strewn pine forests—just the kind | of eountry a bandit might be expected | to choose for an ambush. but nothing | happened. until’ late that night we | reached Las Vegas. There we found that | | the town had been piilaged, as well as several outlying villages. “When we started again the next morn- ing we found that thirty of the natives had adopted us, for they said the ban- { dits would not attack white men who would defend themselves. Incidentally would not belleve our state- because | the natives | ment that we were Americans. | they said that we were gentlemen, and he swung his arms wildly and ex-|that Americans could rot fall under that | claimed: “1 am for God! I am for|Ciass Ention. 3 e | * The little child thought it was an- other campaign speech, and resented “It was in Mexico on this occasion that im- fact that her df.un»r’s friend ln\,d we experienced what was perhaps our no defepders. Standing npon the bench. | (F (Ol T Ve w n our way t | She shouted out at the top of her small | Strangest m W ey & e e hole ehupch: ~wWell. I|the volcano of Cape de Perrote, near Hughes plead the cause of Sam with =u "; am for Dick Austin and Taft™ Orizaba in quest of the Pteronymia spe- "ot wul Ehes patted himseir A | cies, when we fell short of provisions i Ay deed Met His Waterloo. | our native zuide, however, told us of Sam _stalked into| | some beetle rvae which were edible, | Representative 459, digging great numbers of them out M. LERSEIL Ot BT ImENeE Se R, Tow J. F. Byrnes of| o falien pine logs, we found them of & O e e ate South Carolinalageor much better than sardines.” your pay out o “it's the pawnticket | hails from the! prom Mexico, working with net and for the pin.” ate whose chief preserving cases through C tenala and - industry is the fur-{ so4uaq5r the entomological adventurers A Real Repeater. | nishing of PUMan | arayy came to thmt paradise of the but- | car porters. He be-| terfly seeker—Casts Rica. . But, in ratio Representative lieves that they | With the.vewasd, Ahe dr'dnk';;s !l((-pl 5 R. W. Austin of hee'a class of men|and it'was here ‘that after daring all r inor selsmic’ disturbances. and taking Tennessee is not a | set apart by nature | SNOE SO a O les around the very native of the state for their peculiar | ciater rim of ‘belehing Poas volcano, they he represents. He duties in life—one | managed to leave the country only & is. in fact, an Ala- of these said quties | f6% days hefore (¢ way 1aid in ruins m i 9 - 68t “hunting” of our etime Semiad, (and_epoa/ beinz to separate | .. gound: in’Costa Rica.” declares Dr. ran for Congress | a man from his{Schaus. “‘At the gnd of our three vears against Joe Wheel- er, but running againstJoe Wheeler in Alabdma is like trying to keep cool in central Africa. Austin moved up | into Tennessee and on the train was accosted by @ man who asked if he was not a former candidate against Wheeler. As the re- ply was in the afirmative, the stranger laughed and said, “Well, I ought to| know vou, for I voted against you seven times in one day." “How's that?" asked Austin. “Well.” drawled the stranger, “when was a-bucking agz’inst. Wheeler I, s on a steamboat running fox miles down the river. 1 begun voting just after sunrise at the first town -at which the boat stopped and I kepi at 1 day in every village we reached— one day so 1 know 1 voted ag'inst you seven times, at least” ' In one of Austin'’s Tennessee cam- paigns a big Methodist revival was be- ing conducted at the same time that the palitical pot vegan to seethe. Presi- dent Taft came, swinging around his circle to make things more lively. Attending the revival was a . little girl, the daughter of one of Austin's stanchest friends. The preacher. orated in fine style and pictured the misery of the worldly soul Rising in his en- thusiasm to the heights of excitement, delight o coin, tells with great which a fellow- But Byrnes a recent happening in countryman of his went the porter one better a word, he fleeced that worthy to a finish. The man—call him Jones—took a sleeper for New York and when he got off the tran in Gotham his Umeplece was miss- ing. He Inquired at the office. but noth- ing had been turned in there. A few days later he was taking a train south when the same porter who had come north with him entered the car. Across his expansive vest shone a gleaming chain of gold that had a very familiar 100k to Jones. And Jones w enough of a Sheriock Holmes to smell a rat at once “Please let me know the time.” sald Jones to the porter. That imposing Worthy took out the watch proudly. Jones quickly grabbed it “This is my wateh!" he sald, sharp “the one vou hooked'from me on my way north: and by way of identifying I can tell you the number inside without open- ing it. Tf I report you for this steal, you will lose your job; and- the post of rob- bing men, which you have been holding for years, will lose an ornament. [ will make a deal—pay me fifty dollars and the watch and I will let the matter drop. Ang the porter, for the first time in the annals-of the Pullman comipany. coughed up the long green to the tune of Afty simoleons. there we Nad added 5,000 species to ou callection, ‘and the remarkable part of this gooud ‘fortune *xas that amonx them were 1.250 “entirely new to science. From the sea level we traversed coun- try which rose to an elevation of 12,000 feet, ana because of the diversity of climate thus afforded, the fauna was richer than In any country we had ted. But they were not always easy nare. recall that the Morpho Cypris. great butterfly of metallic biue, m uring sometimes six or seven inche across, gave us much trouble. They fiy forty feet from the ground, entirely put of reach of any ordinary net, and Mr. Barnes spent five davs in a ravine of the Rio Sucio before he could bag three specimens. " “On the other hand, however. in the case of the Thecla. tiypria, which be. fore that had been extremely rare, I bagged sixty-four species along a gin- gle stretch of roadway in one day. Summer Comfort. ' need never be bothered with mosquitoes. gnats or flies out of doors if oil of lavender is used. It will positively keep away the wingead pests, and 25 cents' worth will last all sum- ner. Touch: the.arms. face, nmeck and ankles above the low shoes with the molstened cork occasionally, and not a mosquitd, iy or gnat will approach you.