C COPPER BUTTERFLIES Rarities, Historic Specimens

Captain Edward Bagwell Purefoy. A number of the Lycaena dispar rutilus in this list, are from colonies that were established in Ireland by Capt. E B Bagwell Purefoy. Purefoy has the distinction of being the person who discovered the life history of the Large Blue Butterfly Maculinea arion,  which depends upon symbiosis with the red ant Myrmica sabuleti.  He was working with FW Frohawk who was working on the two volume work on the Butterflies of the British Isles. Frohawk was a superb artist as well as entomologist, and he could not disover how the Large Blue larvae completed their life history, because they kept being taken by an ant!  In 1915 Purefoy, not only cracked the life history of the Large Blue, but he established most successfully the only colony of the Large Copper  Lycaena dispar rutilus, in the British Isles,  at his family home Greenfields, in Tipperary. Captain Purefoy is the Grandfather of Rosemary Goodden. His colony in Ireland thrived from 1918 spanning the entire period between the two world wars.

PLEASE NOTE: This collection of Coppers is offered now and orders from it can be dispatched immediately.

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