Butterflies & Other Insects My Enduring Impressions

About this book

A West London boy, born and bred, Phillip Ackery spent the first eighteen years of his life taking no interest in insects whatsoever. However, in 1965, to his own surprise, he was engaged as a Scientific Assistant in the Entomology Department of the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. So began forty-one years associated with the Museum's collections, primarily the butterfly collection. To some extent, Butterflies & Other Insects reflects his areas of specialization – the milkweed butterflies, the passion-vine butterflies, the apollo butterflies, and the birdwing butterflies – together with other stories that imposed on his memory over four decades. As a new-comer to entomology in 1965, he became very aware of the absence of a collections-based introductory text, so to some extent Butterflies & Other Insects addresses the needs of his eighteen-year-old self.

Contents

INTRODUCTION

AN INSECT VOCATION
- Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), and the pre-Linnaeans
- Linnaeus' Students and the Linnaean Legacy
- Out with the Old ...
- The Mystery of Names
- The Celebrity Taxonomist (Vladamir Nabokov)
- Great Private Collections
- The Butterfly Hunters
- Fakes, Frustration & Fixers

BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS
- The Milkweed Butterflies
- The Apollo Butterflies
- The Birdwing Butterflies
- The Passion-vine Butterflies
- Chasing the Caterpillars
- The Hawkmoths (Sphingidae)
- The Story of Silk
- Behind the Peppered Moth

AN INSECT MISCELLANY
- Maggots, Murder and Medicine
- The Quest for Quinine
- Plague and the Flea
- The Story of Honey
- The Heritage Eaters
- Despised, Rejected: the Cockroach's Fate
- The Weird and the Wonderful
- Dragonflies (Damselflies, Snake Feeders and Woodwigs)
- An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles

EXIT

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