Mississippi moth multitude moved to MSU museum

Contact: Bob Ratliff

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Richard Brown inspects Mather collection.


Richard Brown inspects Mather collection.

For more than half a century, Clinton resident Bryant Mather spent his days providing expertise on concrete to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. By night, however, he was drawn to the moths of Mississippi.

What grew to become one of the most extensive private moth collections in the United States now is in the care of the Mississippi Entomological Museum at Mississippi State. Mather, a Baltimore, Md., native, completed the transfer to the university earlier this year.

Trained as a geologist, Mather came to Vicksburg in 1946 to work for the Corps of Engineers. During more than 50 years in the river city, he traveled the world as a recognized and highly sought authority on the construction of dams and other concrete structures.

And the moths? Mather said that hobby began when he was 11 years old at a summer YMCA camp.

"I shared a tent with a slightly older boy who collected butterflies. I came home and told my mother I wanted to do that," he recently recalled. A follow-up visit to the library got him started.

Mather completed his bachelor's degree and did graduate work in geology at hometown Johns Hopkins University. Following his first Corps assignment in 1941 with the Central Concrete Laboratory at the U.S. Military Academy in New York, he moved to Vicksburg, where his professional expertise would eventually earn him the honorary title of "Captain Concrete" and where Mississippi's abundant insects would rekindle his interest in insect collecting.

"There was little literature in 1946 on Mississippi butterflies, so Mr. Mather began documenting them," said museum director Richard L. Brown. "He and his late wife, Katharine, wrote the first and still the only publication covering all of Mississippi's butterflies."

Ten years later, Mather turned to moths, amassing an amazing number of specimens.

"Mr. Mather accumulated more than 190,000 moths and thousands of other insects," Brown said. "He exchanged specimens with other collectors for species from other areas of the U.S. He also donated many specimens to the American Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution and other institutions, all the while keeping the best and unique for his personal collection."

Mather's collection comprises almost 45,000 moths and almost 3,000 specimens of other insects. Eight insect species, including five moths, two butterflies and a fishfly that Mather discovered are named matheri in his honor. The MSU collection also contains paratypes, specimens that have been used in species descriptions by entomologists.

Brown says while collectors would pay several dollars each for many of the specimens, the accompanying data are more valuable than the insects themselves.

"Mr. Mather has provided us with the most comprehensive set of data on Mississippi moths ever collected," he said. "This includes information about moths from areas of the state where we have not collected data."

Brown and his colleagues are busy these days sorting and storing the hundreds of boxes containing the Mather collection. During their work, they've discovered his sense of humor.

"When someone gave him a rubber spider, he dutifully labeled it as a Vicksburg specimen and placed it with rows of real spiders," Brown said with a grin.