This means he collected butterflies. Not as a job, but as a hobby. During the week he worked for the tax department, but on the weekends he spent all his time improving his butterfly collection. His collection was massive. It was probably one of the best in the country, possibly even the world, but it would be impossible to tell, because Uncle Dermott never let anyone else see his butterflies. “People might steal them,” he would say, and so Uncle Dermott’s butterfly collection was never seen by any of the professors or scientists who study these things. Instead, it stayed locked up in the spare rooms of the house, where he could gloat over it all by himself. And it was a collection worth gloating over. He had the very rare Papilio demoleus, with its beautiful black and white pattern and tiny red dots on the bottom of its wings. He had several rare Eurema herla, which have bright yellow wings, and all manner of common butterflies and moths. His pride and joy, though, was his European Zerynthia polyxena, which sat in its own special case on the wall in his study.
