August 27, 1998

Batches of Butterflies Can Be Bought on the Web, or Just Studied From Afar

By TINA KELLEY

he World Wide Web captures everything in its sticky threads, including just about anything anyone would ever want to know about butterflies. Flitting from link to link can yield serendipitous citings and other drops of nectar.

At www.holeinhand.com, for example, the site for a butterfly farm in Hazelton, Pa., you can discover how to purchase live butterflies to release at "weddings, graduations, corporate events, divorces, anniversaries, grand openings, births and funerals." Before shipment, all butterflies are hand-fed and exercised to guarantee health, according to the site, though the concept of butterflies doing calisthenics stretches the imagination.

The Butterfly Web Site promotes the releasing of butterflies at events as "more ecologically sound than rice or balloons," though make sure to release lepidoptera that are native to your region, so as not to disturb the gene pool.

The site discusses how butterfly farms can be started on just a windowsill or desktop. Under frequently asked questions, there's a listing of how to say butterfly in 51 languages, including Indonesian (kupu-kupu), Malaysian (rama-rama) and the Australian aboriginal tongue, Wiradjuri (buuja-buuja).

The Butterfly Web site also has a bulletin board section, where you can join the three dozen others who have read postings with headings like "Butterflies in my coneflowers."

For a listing of pictures and natural history of the butterflies by state and other parts of North America, see butterflywebsite.com/articles/ npwc/butterflychecklist.htm. This site is as good as some nature guides, where one learns that in Washington the Bramble Green Hairstreak lays its eggs singly on the flower buds of its host plants. And take a look at www.discovery.com/area/science/ micro/butterfly.html to see a butterfly wing magnified 650 times.

You can also trace or help report the progress of the annual migration of monarch butterflies, through the Journey North site. And at the same site, classrooms in the United States and Canada can pair up with those in Mexico to send symbolic butterflies south for the winter. "Mexican students will watch over them -- and return them next spring as the real monarchs journey north," the site says.

Butterfly-related volunteer opportunities can be found on the Web, too. Amateur and professional butterfly watchers are needed to monitor trends in butterfly populations for five consecutive days or five years.

You could also find how to purchase "Flights of Fancy," a 24-by-36-inch, $2,350 collage made with real butterfly wings. Not to worry about the carnage, though: "All of the butterflies used for Butterfly Creations are bred on butterfly farms, primarily in South America. In these enclosed plantations they flourish in their natural surroundings and they die naturally. We do not capture or kill any of the butterflies we use for display and none are an endangered species."

You can also find chat sites with postings like the following: "I am a translator (Dutch to English) and have been having some trouble with names of butterflies. The one I'm currently stuck with is 'vliervlinder,' which I have found referred to as 'ourapteryx sambucaria.' It will be a European butterfly. Does anyone know an English common name for it?"

Perhaps the most intriguing page is not simply about butterflies, but about the myths and superstitions humans have concocted about them, like those found at www.insects.org/ced4/symbollist3.html). One example given says that according to Funk and Wagnalls' Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, "to get a new dress all a girl need do is to catch a butterfly of the desired color and crush it between her teeth while muttering a magic formula," and "Some say that if a butterfly is put in a gun, it is impossible to miss the target."

And for those who wondered why some angels were pictured with butterfly wings in medieval times, and even for those who did not, the site explains: "The Serbians look on the butterfly as the soul of a witch and believe if they can find her body and turn it around while she is asleep, the soul will not be able to find her mouth and re-enter, and the witch will probably die."

It may sound odd, but after all, the Greeks used the same word for both butterfly and soul.

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Related Sites
Following are links to the external Web sites mentioned in this article. These sites are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and The Times has no control over their content or availability. When you have finished visiting any of these sites, you will be able to return to this page by clicking on your Web browser's "Back" button or icon until this page reappears.

• HoleInHand.com

• Butterfly Web Site

• Butterfly Listing

• Butterfly Wing Magnification

• Journey North Site

• Volunteer Opportunities

• "Flights of Fancy" Collage

• Myths and Superstitions About Butterflies