Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-06-01
MEN WITH A MANIA.
MAKING COLLECTIONS or ODD AND
 CURIOUS THINGS.


 sands of dollars every year on books and has the finest collection of illuminated missals in this country, and the most complete collec- tion of first printed editions in the world. Henry Clews has the pottery craze, and his Royal Saxony, Sevres, Worcester and Ores den ware are unsurpassed on this side of the ocean, Alfred Sully raises roses at his coun- try place and is always searching for new variety; for that reason more than any other he got his affairs in order and went across the water, where he will visit all the famous roseries of France, where most of the new varieties of that flower are produced, and contemplates also looking through the old gardens of England for the elder varieties that can no longer be found in the collections of modern florists. Jay Gould devotes his leisure moments to orchids and his orchid houses at his place on the Hudson contain the largest variety of these strange plants in any collection in the world outside of the Botani- cal Garden of London. Austin Corbin cares most for Japanese curios and has his house stored with crystals, swords, pottery, bronzes, Kakamono and carved worries till there is scarcely room for mere commonplace living purposes.
 RARE AND BEAUTIFUL THINGS
 One Wall street man has collected pipes from all over the world. Another has ran sacked all lands for weapons; third devotes himself to bringing together wood carvings, a fourth to the collection of Mosaics-and so ad infnitum. There are a lot of spurious ar ticles palmed off on some of these untrained collectors, but on the whole the mania is ad- mirable if for nothing else than that it re- suits in filling the country with rare and beautiful things. One of the most interesting and occult of these collections is that of Nue- moegens, which consists entirely of moths and butterflies 1t contains 100, 900 of these insects, all carefully arranged, ticketed, cata- logued and displayed in handsome glass cases. Nuemoegen has been some twelve years bringing these together, and it is said to be the most complete collection of moths and buss.rf1ies in the world. No expense or pains have been spared, no expedition has left any of the large cities for purposes.of exploration in foreign countries that has not been accompanied by an agent of Nuemoe- gems, commissioned to bring home specimens of the papilio of the land.
 The collection includes specimens indigen- ous to every country from the equator to the very limit of their existence northward, and they vary in color and size all the way from tiny creatures half the diameter of ones lit tie finger nail and ot the purest white up to wide winged beauties of glowing peacock blues, with bodies bigger than humming bird. They range the whole gamut of color and present the most curious suggestions of imitation such as the pansy butterfly, whose four wings resemble with startling exactness the four petals of the purple and golden heartsease, or those so like dead leaf as to be indistinguishable at little distance Others have precisely the same rich scarlet coloring of autumn foliage, or the hue of the peacock's breast; the deaths head moth has a distinct skull and crossbones marked on his back, a whole branch of this family of lepi- doptera are seeming counterparts of bed of pale purple wood violets. Some are white as snow and others black as velvet, while most beautiful of all are the great creatures of pale, milky green, whose wings have long tails of four or five inches attached Some are very like dragon flies, with gauzelike opalescent wings, while some of the big bodied fellows are covered with actual feathers of down.
 THE TRUE COLLECTOR.
 The true collector is born, and is only made by long experience and much labor These rich stock brokers indulge in collecting only as an elegant advertisement and intelligent way of getting rid of their superfuous in come; they are rarely born with the true passion. The men who sell curios take them in hand and educate them slowly and laboriously to distinguish between the true and the false, the artistic and the mere tricious, and in large part their collections are brought together by their having carte blanche orders with London and Parisian dealers to buy and ship them anything that comes up for sale fitted to perfect or adorn their possessions.
 But there are two or three men in New York of very moderate means who are true born collectors They mouse about old book and brio shops, dive suddenly into junk cellars on Avenue A and come up ra- diant and grimy with some dingy object which, when put in order, causes their friends to crever with envy. Their manner, too, in purchasing is worth study: Whenever they happen across something specially desirable they begin gradually to exhibit eand more profound disgust and scorn. They contempt uously toss the treasure trove aside and ex- anime everything else before they return to it, finally selecting some cheap, worthless object and suggesting that the find shall be thrown in as an inducement to purchase, and wearily pocket the whole as if after all they felt they were very weak to allow themselves to be persuaded to take it at all. have seen this performance tried successfully more than once.-Brooklyn Eagle.