How do you say goodbye to a life’s work?

John McArthur’s collection of 20,000 butterflies is taking their last trip by ship to The Natural History Museum. Here their beauty and more importantly the meticulously recorded data of when and where they were captured - a record of what was living where at certain points in time - will be housed in the fireproof, humidity controlled storage vaults in London.
McArthur has netted thousands of specimens all over the world, including China and Japan where he worked as a diplomat. While it was China where McArthur met his husband James Hu and took him on his first butterfly expeditions, McArthur’s last swish of the net was New Zealand’s Cobb Valley, Nelson. This last collection came the same year McArthur was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Hu and McArthur’s sister played a major part in assisting with the packing and data entry for the collection as McArthur’s disease encroached on his body. @johnhsummers has written an incredible story for the current issue of @nzgeo on what it means to farewell a life’s work.

LOTTIE HEDLEY

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