Insect Collecting
Because most insects are small and the majority cannot be identified without the examination of minute morphological characters, entomologists often make and maintain insect collections. Very large collections are conserved in museums or colleges and universities where they are maintained and studied by specialists. Many college course require students to form small collections. There are also amateurs entomologists and collectors who keep collections.
Historically insect collecting has been widespread and was in the Victorian age a very popular educational hobby. Insect collecting has left traces in European cultural history, literature and songs (e.g., Georges Brassens's La chasse aux papillons (The Hunt for Butterflies)). The practice is still widespread in many countries, and is particularly common among Japanese youths.
Since most types of insects have hard exoskeletons that retain their form after the insects dies, it is easy and practical to form a collection.
Read more about Insect Collecting: Further Reading
Famous quotes containing the words insect and/or collecting:
“As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and hide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information, I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me the human insect.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In the very midst of the crowd about this wreck, there were men with carts busily collecting the seaweed which the storm had cast up, and conveying it beyond the reach of the tide, though they were often obliged to separate fragments of clothing from it, and they might at any moment have found a human body under it. Drown who might, they did not forget that this weed was a valuable manure. This shipwreck had not produced a visible vibration in the fabric of society.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)