A passion for Chironomidae

Résumé fourni par la source

A passion for ChironomidaeHalfway through my 82 nd year I hope that our readers will bear with my reminiscences and observations.My mother reports that my first encounter with invertebrates was when I presented her with a live scorpion on a cushion, saying 'Look!' I cannot recollect what my mother's reaction was, but she had only recently settled in South India and had developed a deep mistrust of legless vertebrates in particular and invertebrates in general.Whatever it was, it didn't stop me looking.By 8 I was chasing butterflies around the compound with a net my mother made me from an old tennis racket.This turned into a scientific enterprise when my father found a book on Indian butterflies; I pored over the descriptions and memorized their scientific names and searched for species I hadn't previously seen as distinct.The butterflies were placed in envelopes, labelled with their binomina and full data.The collection was stored in an old tin suitcase and covered with Gammexane to keep the ants at bay while away at boarding school.Boarding school was in the jungled Palni Hills at 2000 metres.It was a paradise for a budding invertebratologist: the jungles surrounding the school in those days not only harboured elephant and tigers, but teemed with insects -the large beetles were the best fun: we kept the biggest stag beetles we could find in our desks during class time and would fight them during breaks.I would get up early in the morning and sneak out of the school grounds against regulations to shin up the lamp pole in the centre of the Seven Ways Roundabout to find what moths had been attracted overnight (half a century later I visited my old school -the lamp post has gone.).I even contemplated joining the Franciscans, primarily because of their interest in the local plants and animals rather than their ascetic lifestyle; the museum at the monastery is still there today.So it was that when the family moved to England at age 14 I was already a committed entomologist.My first headmaster in England when interviewing me asked what I saw as my future career I said 'An entomologist', to which he replied, 'Well, it's a good hobby'; I replied, 'No Sir, that is to be my life's work'.He was right in a way, but here I am still an entomologist, an amateur, yes, and as such have suffered for lack of funding, but at liberty to follow my interests unrestricted.

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