The Suspicious Butterflies

One day in 1906, a brisk, enthusiastic French priest stepped jauntily ashore in Shanghai to begin his career as a Vincentian missionary. For the next 46 years, Father Adolph Buch kept himself busy teaching, preaching, training young Chinese priests, organizing medical dispensaries, and helping to care for the sick, the poor and the helpless. In the midst of his tasks, he found time to become a collector of butterflies as well.

Museums as far off as Chicago welcomed the specimens sent them by Adolph Buch, and some even gave his name to hitherto uncatalogued varieties. But, after spending half his life in China, Father Buch saw the institutions he helped found taken over one by one by China's Communists. At last his own superiors realized that there was no point in his staying on longer. Father Buch packed up 150 of his choicest butterflies and started the long journey home.

Last week, a wizened, bent and benign old man of 87, Adolph Buch came shuffling up the dirt road to Lowu Bridge that leads out of Red China into free Hong Kong. He no longer had even his butterflies. Communist customs officials had taken them away. "Imagine it," said the old priest. "They accused me of wanting to send my collection to the States, to be sent back laden with germs."

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