Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-07-21

on his arm Some Of the bottles had orig
inaly been Original packages by means
of which wet goods. prescribed by the
famous Maine law. had teen taken into
found a few suitable bottles for his co!lec-
ton in the basket.
Historic Menu Cards.
Collecting menu cards is a fad that may
be INDUCED in without much direct cost If
you are a frequent public diner, though
to attend enough pub ic dinners to gather
a big collection of handsome menu cards
would be highly expensive.
The first consistent and persistent menu
collector that the writer knows of was Miss
F. E. Buttolph of New York. Two or three
years ago she had gathered 12,OOO or 15,OVJ
noteworthy cards together and in time the
collection is to have a place in tie New
York Public Lib: airy that is to be the result
of combining the Aston and Lenox lbraries
and the Tiden library fund Till the new
marble building is completed the collection
VIII be housed in the Astor library.
1t Is really most interesting collection
and by no means without historic interest.
1t includes menus of the dinners given
when Prince Henry of Prussia and Prince
Louis of Battenburg visited America; Of
the last luncheon given to President Nc
kinley; of the wedding banquet given to
Queen Wilhelmina, and SO on. Some Of
them are very elaborate and artistic speci-
mems the printer s arr, some are zone
by hand. and some-mostly of very i'm
portant dinners indeed-are very simple
and unpretentious.
Butterfly Collections
Butterfly collectors exist in the United
States by the neutrality-suspicious. by the
thousands-and there are a few persons who
make their living that way Two brothers,
located at Wellesley, Mass, long carried
on fiourishing trade at butterfly collect
Ing. and may still be engaged In it.
They began in an amateur way as most
professional collectors of all kinds do, when
boys. AS usual, Also with amateurs. they
made exchanges with other collectors from
the first, and, little by little, grew into the
regular business of selling specimens for
money. notion of the extent to which
their business ultimately grew may be had
from the fact that in their quest for butter
flies the brothers, at one time and another,
have visited South America, China, India,
and many other strange and distant parts
of the world.
These brothers had many interesting ad-
ventures In the course of their quest for
the beautiful insects. In Australia one of
them heard of a remarkable variety of but
terfiy which rarely or never came to tie
ground, but inha bted the topmost branches
of lofty trees from which circumstance no
specimen was known to have been cap
tured. The American butterfly hunter was
equal to the task, however Selecting Il
shell loaded with very fine shot he fired at
one of the butterflies. bringing 1t to the
ground.
1t was badly shattered, of course; too
badly,in fact. to be of any use as a speci-
men. But the collector spread the broken
winged insect out upon low shrub and
waited. AS he expected 1t only a
short time before other butterflies of the
same species. seeing of their number
resting closely to the ground. flew down to
keep 1t company. Four were captured, and
afterward the decoy plan led to the cap
turing of many more.
The natives, by the way, were very gu
perstitous about those butterflies. and ex-
pected the collector would suffer some hor-
rid visitation for molesting them. After a
certain terrible thunderstorm the natives