A PECULIAR INDUSTRY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 96, 1 August 1910, Page 7

A PECULIAR INDUSTRY

One of the strangest methods of making money, a writer in Chambers' Journal points out, is surely the raising ol butterflies in the same manner as one runs a poultry farm. Yet in Europe there are several such establishments, and they have attained a degree of great prosperity. One in France rose from very! humble beginnings to an extensive industry, while similarly there is a flourishing farm on the south-eastern outskirts of London. Here in the early spring may be seen as many as forty or fifty_ thousand caterpillars and pupae, while in summer there may be thousands of butterflies of every conceivable color and beauty flitting about the various houses in which ithey are caged. This novel nursery covers an acre or so, and the strange stock is housed in large cages built inside conditions as analogous to those of nature as possible. In addition, there are numerous smaller cages of a portable character, which, with their strange contents, can .be moved about from point to pointy as desired, and attached' to the trees. In extensive glasshouses are cultivated hosts of plants and flowers of infinite variety, on which the caterpillars and butterflies can move about at their own sweet will. The farm is carried out on lines very similar to those in orchid cultivation, and assistants are retained for scouting various parts of the country for new specimens. The product of the farm is sold to entomologists.