A Rome furniture restorer has stumbled across an antique collection of rare English coastal moths and butterflies while working on an English chest of drawers.
Ignoring a request by the owner of the 18th-century bureau to throw out the collection, the restorer called in Rome's Civic Zoology Museum entomologist Alberto Zilli, who confirmed the importance of the find.
Zilli said the collection of species from the English Channel coast dated back to the early 1900s and was well conserved and catalogued.
The most exciting specimen was an albino version of the common European Tawny Shears moth, which is usually brown, found near Dover.
Zilli said these unique white versions may have evolved to hide from predators more effectively on the white chalk cliffs.
The collection also included extremely rare Marsh Mallow moths, a species found only in Britain and now confined to a handful of coastal nature reserves, and Sand Dart moths, which live around sand dunes and begin life as nocturnal caterpillars, burrowing into the sand during the day.
Zilli said the important collection would be disinfested and restored using modern conservation techniques before going on show as part of an upcoming butterfly exhibition at the museum.
