Folks, today I want to make a brief mention of what has become known as the Manchester Moth and unfortunately it will have to be very brief because I left my papers on the moth with Lizzy a week or so ago for her to have a look at. I do remember that about 50-60 specimens of this moth were found on Kersal Moor near Manchester but all but about 3 were destroyed by the irate landlady of the habitation of the discoverer because he had spent all his money on drink and could not afford to pay his rent, so she threw his moth collection on the fire!! I do love these 'human interest' stories.The mystery is how did the moth get there in the first place? It has never been seen since, the other two specimens are in the Natural History Museum in London and in a museum in Melbourne. Dr Dmitri Loganov an entomologist at the Manchester Museum (where the accompanying photographs were taken by myself) believes that caterpillars from either India or the U.S. may have somehow got to a cotton mill near the moor and later developed into moths. So the next stage is to track down entomologists in those countries to see if they have any further information.
Please will you be very kind and NOT reproduce these photos for your own purposes as I am hoping they will get their first showing when The Mystery Animals of Greater Manchester is published in a few months. I may even try and take better ones.
Rich
D E V O S O C I A L F O O L S
If you obey society`s rules
You will be society`s fools
You`ll obey and then disobey
You`ll disobey and then obey
You thought your mum and dad were fools
You never wanted to listen in school
Now your mind wont go
Where you want to take it
You got a ride but you`re not going to make it
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1 comment:
Richard, for a better picture of the moth, try http://www.campus.manchester.ac.uk/medialibrary/unilife/volume3-issue10.pdf
which contains a good quality, close-up image of the moth in the midst of the usual PR material the University of Manchester churns out.
The collector of the material was one Robert Cribb, who collected a lot of these moths (Euclemensia woodiella) in 1829. From the cursory searches I have done, he doesn't seem to be listed in the 1841 census anywhere in Lancashire (though this may just be a paucity of records) so may have died by then.
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