Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0017071, Fri, 19 Sep 2008 07:13:45 -0400

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Nabokov's son, Dmitri, said in an e-mail ...
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Complete article at following URL:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/09/14/returning_to_flight/
Returning to flight
Efforts of New England biologists help usher in rebirth of the endangered Karner blue butterfly

CONCORD, N.H. - Two biologists crawled through a field thick with blueberry, black chokeberry, and scrub oak, searching for butterfly eggs the size of pinheads.



Suddenly, one of them, Steve Fuller, thrust a hand into the air. "Found one!" he shouted. As his colleague, Heidi Holman, ran to his side, Fuller opened his hand to reveal a tiny white egg of the Karner blue butterfly, clinging to a twig.

[ ... ]

The Karner has a rich history, dating in scientific literature to 1861, when it was first identified by the renowned naturalist W. H. Edwards in Karner, N.Y., a hamlet in the Albany Pine Bush Preserve.

In 1943, the butterfly was classified more precisely by the writer Vladimir Nabokov, who worked from 1941 to 1948 as a curator of the butterfly collection at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. Nabokov gave the Karner its scientific name, Lycaeides melissa samuelis, and, in the novel "Pnin," describes how Karners "fluttered around like blue snowflakes before settling again."

"Even though my father was not a 'joiner' of organizations, associations, or clubs, I can say with certainty that, as an individual, he would have staunchly continued to encourage the efforts to preserve the Karner Blue and its habitat," Nabokov's son, Dmitri, said in an e-mail to the Globe.



Vladimir Nabokov netted his first Karner near Albany in 1950, according to the book "Nabokov's Butterflies," but by then the population was declining. Decades of residential development, road and airport construction, and sand and gravel mining had destroyed much of the nation's barrens and savannas.

[ ... ]

"Its chances of survival are good, if the efforts can be sustained," Amaral said. "But even if we get 5,000 or 10,000 Karners back, if the habitat isn't managed, they will slowly decline."

Dirig is among those hoping the insect thrives. He rhapsodized about the beauty of seeing Karner blues fluttering on purple-blue lupine "like this artistic, perfectly color-coordinated unit."

"I hope, after all of our work, that it's able to hang on," he said. "It's real a survivor, I think, and it's a wonderful little animal to have in our life."


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