Clark, Benjamin Preston - Pennsylvania Photos and Documents
Clark, Benjamin Preston
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About
Title
Clark, Benjamin Preston
Subject
Butterflies
High brown fritillary
Sphingidae
Description
This folder contains correspondence from Benjamin Preston Clark, an entomologist who worked with Sphingidae, commonly known as sphinx moths. Spanning from 1913-1921, Clarkâs correspondence is centered around his collection of Sphingidae, which was made up of specimens collected throughout the United States and abroad by himself and others. By 1921, his collection consisted of 1,010 forms of different species and subspecies out of a known number of 1,267 at the time.
Outside of his work with Sphingidae, Clark also worked with other Lepidoptera, particularly Argynnis. In 1915, he sent all the specimens of Argynnis he collected in 1906 near Banff, Alberta in the Canadian Rockies to the American Entomological Society (AES).
In 1915, Clark met Andrey Avinoff, a Russian lepidopterist, who was serving as gentlemen-in-waiting to Tsar Nicholas II at the time. After learning that Avinoff amassed a collection of about 60,000 specimens of Palaearctic Rhopalocera, many of which originating from Central and Northern Asia, Clark established contact with Avinoff and the AES to foster a potential partnership between the two.
This Digital Object is provided in a collection that is included in POWER Library: Pennsylvania Photos and Documents, which is funded by the Office of Commonwealth Libraries of Pennsylvania/Pennsylvania Department of Education.
