In the latter part of the 19^th century the goal among lepidopterists was to achieve full coverage of British species in your cabinet.  If you had plenty of money you could buy from dealers but the veracity of some of their specimens as being genuine British was always a worry. Obtaining specimens as gifts from friends has always been popular but the idea of building a collection by swapping became very well organised. To be able to obtain many rarities you needed to have for exchange a species that no-one else could find. Even better if you could breed lots from a female.

Weaver’s Wave (Acidalia contiguaria) had always been a very rarely encountered North Wales moth. Lancs. & Chesh. first president Samuel Capper came across it whilst visiting a friend in Llanfairfechan and soon worked out how to find it and breed it. So much did he become the go-to person for it that it was popularly re-named Capper’s Acidalia.  All good things must come to an end and on one hunt for it in its craggy home he slipped and damaged a knee that left him disabled  for life, and severely curtailed his field work. His obituary suggests that he thought “if I cannot go to entomology, entomology must come to me” so the idea of a meeting place for other entomologists was born in 1877. There may well be some truth in that idea. The most comprehensive review of his entomological life is the “In Memorium” in the 36^th Annual Report and Proceedings of the Lancashire & Cheshire Entomological Society available on line on the North West Invertebrates website.

A moth very commonly encountered in collections is the Sandhill Rustic (Luperina nickerlii gueneei) a coastal endemic and the specimens will say they are from St. Annes-on-Sea and taken by T. Baxter in the early 20^th century.  Baxter was a dealer and swapper.  He was usefully for him, able to distinguish several varieties, each separately saleable and for a reasonable sum of between about £30 to £100 each in today’s money.  I was appalled when I first encountered so many of this rare moth in museum after museum. Arthur Watson, an entomologist from St. Annes, and for a time president of the Lancs. and Chesh. suggested to me that Baxter knew the site was going to be utterly destroyed by the building of what is now known as Fairhaven Lake so had no such concerns. Maybe Arthur was correct but whatever, it was Mr. Developer not Mr. Baxter that saw off the moth at St Annes.

The St. Annes specimens led me astray at first as I was expecting it to be always a pale moth but there seems to be a cline with usually pale  St. Annes moths at one end and usually darker grey moths at the other end, at Newborough, Anglesey.