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Charles Macnamara was amused by the habits of the tiger beetle. He wrote an article for the Canadian Entomologist in November 1922 in which he described how to capture and study the habits of tiger beetle larvae. This article reveals that by this time in his life, Macnamara no longer looked to the landscape for artistic expression. He combines scientific detail with wit and humour when writing about the 'citizens' of Tiger Beetle Town."The Pilgrim in their Progress through the Interpreter's House were shown, among other excellent things in the Significant Rooms, "a man who could look no way but downwards" So busy was he with a muck-rake gathering together straws and sticks, that he never looked up to see an angel standing close by and holding out a crown for him. In spite of the moral of this story, when I want to find tiger beetle larvae I "look no way but downwards." Crowns, which have always been notoriously uneasy headgear, are much out of fashion at present. And if I did look up, I don't believe I would find an angel on the job anyway. So on my summer walks I usually keep my eyes fixed on every sandy path or bare, loamy place I come to, seeking the burrows of the tiger beetle grubs........ Last summer I found a collection of over 200 burrows in an area of about 10 feet by 20 feet on a sandy farm road in the Township of Fitzroy, County of Carleton, Ontario. This place I called "Tiger Beetle Town," and it was here that I principally studied the habits of the larvae."
15
Charles Macnamara gathering insects1926
Marshalls Bay, Ontario, Canada
16
In a letter from Jean Macnamara to her Uncle Charlie in 1926, she told him that everyone enjoyed the story about the foxes. She asked him where they lived and would he take her there. She wrote, "Some day in the summer perhaps, or will you act as you did the time I went out with you and sat on the log while you looked for springtails. That was a swell time."17
Postcard1936
18
Charles Macnamara kept a large photograph of an insect over his desk and sent postcards like one featuring a dead house fly to his friends. Charles Macnamara wrote an article about the 'Drumming of Stoneflies' in the Canadian Entomologist in March 1926. He wrote, " our house is on the bank of the Madawaska river in the Town of Arnprior, Ontario, and although the windows and doors are kept well screened in summer, many acquatic insects find their way in. Excepting for a few mosquitos, they are harmless, and as an entomologist, I find them interesting and entertaining, although the rest of my family do not seem to enjoy them so much."19
Dobson fly1941
20
This beautiful photograph of the male Dobson fly (Corydalis cornutus) appears in Macnamara's Scientific Scrap Book No. 2 which was compiled between 1940 and 1942. Macnamara was still in the process of compiling the third notebook when he died in 1944. |
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