The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1914-05-28
BUTTERFLY FARM
OWNED BY Girl
Makes Good Income by Rails
Ing Hundreds OF Insects.
FINDS A READY MARKET.

Catching the Butterflies and Moths
Only a Small Part of the Work, as
Real Difficulty Is Experienced In
Raising misunderstanding as Well as
Profitable Duty.
Truckee, Gala California girl with
the astonishing name of Ximena Nc
Glashan has the distinction of being
the first professional butterfly farmer"
in this country. She began the work by
mere chance but she has made sue
cess of it by dint of hard work and at
tention to scientific detail.
1t sounds very pretty to be called, as
Miss McGlashan frequently is, "the
butterfly princess" But this particular
princess is a mighty industrious one.
In the spring and summer she is often
busy from daylight until after 10
O'Clock at night.
This little fact is worth mentioning.
as Miss McGlashan has received hun
dreds of letters from women and girls
who apparently want to found a whole
dynasty of butterfly princesses. They
have heard that this young girl, with
out capital or previous experience, is
making $50 week out of butterflies
and moths. That sounds pretty good TO
them. But their enthusiasm may suffer
relapse when they read the whole
story.
She started her farm" near here a
year and a half ago She was planning
then to be a teacher, and when one day
she saw her father showing his little
grandchild how to capture a butterfly
it occurred to her that the knowledge
might come in handy in her own career
as an instructor of school children.
Her father readily consented to show
how the trick was done and casually
limited that she could make more
money out of butterflies than in peda
gogy. He "sugarcd" some trees for
her, fixed her up Il lantern and some
cyanide in jars. showed her how to
catch moths at night by placing the
mouth of the jar over the unwary
feaster on the sugar, and without more
ado she was launched on her career.
Inside of two weeks she shipped
1900 moths and butterflies and receiv-
ed $40 in return. In ten weeks she
sold over 10000 specimens at a fat
price of 3 cents apiece and had over
$500 in return. In addition, she had
on hand about 10000 eggs, larvae and
pupae, which would hatch out in due
season. These really constituted her
farm and are the important end of the
business.
Catching the butterflies and moths
is only q small part of the work. The
real job is raising them. Only perfect
specimens are saleable. and it is a
ticklish undertaking to capture these
fragile creatures without iniuring
them. Many of them are already a
trife damaged. They may have lost
an antenna or piece of a wing.
The first thing this young entomolo-
gist does with her captured speci-
mems, therefore, is to sort them over
carefully. She liberates the males that
are not perfect so that they may go
out and propagate more of their spe-
cies. The imperfect female specimens
she puts in paper bags one to each
bag, so that she will have their eggs to
add to her stock
This is where the real work begins
In each bag she puts food for the oc
cupant Butterflies will not deposit
their eggs unless confined in a gauzo
bag or its equivalent and supplied with
their particular food Every day Miss
McGlashan feeds her butterflies with
dried apples soaked in water contain
ing a little honey or sugar
With this treatment she persuades
them to lay their eggs on the inside Of
the bag. Some of them deposit as many
as 200 or 300 eggs When they have
finished they die. The eggs hatch in
varying periods, some in a few days.
others only after the lapse of months
Miss McGlashan has them in test
tubes where she can keep track of their
development During the winter she
puts the tubes in cold storage to pre-
vent the eggs Matching before the prop
er food plants are ready.
When the eggs come out she has an
other period of feeding before her. She
caters to the tastes of these little
worms as carefully as if she were a
high salaried chef supplying a cuisine
for a lot Of epicures. She experiments
with all kinds of leaves till she finds
what seems most tempting to the ap-
petites of her charges.
Some of these she keeps in candy
jars If she has many hundreds of one
kind she places them in tight barrel,
covering the open head with gauze. In
the bottom of each jar or barrel she
puts several inches of dirt or leaf mold.
as the larvae like to hide in it in the
daytime. Fresh leaves must be put in
every day, the old food taken out and
the receptacle kept clean.
When the perfect moths and butter
flies finally emerge from the pupae they
are ready for shipment and prices are
good