By Sara Montemayor
During my stay at the Natural History Museum in Paris I had the opportunity to study Puton’s Hemiptera Collection. It is the largest personal collection of Hemiptera housed at the Institute of Entomology. It is made up of 59 entomological boxes in which are represented many of the families included within the Hemiptera and a large part of families represented in Europe.
The collection not only stands out for the biological diversity it presents but also because of its size and organization. Puton’s collection is unique in that it was organized in the image and likeness of the “Catalogue des Hemipteres (Heteropteres, Cicadides et Psillides) de la faune Paleartique (Puton 1886)”. It is a set of 59 boxes in which are kept specimens of Hemiptera that are the faithful reflection of a catalog printed on paper formed exclusively by words, without any pictures. The boxes are organized exactly like the catalog with the same words with only one difference, when those words refer to a species, specimens of the species accompany them.
On the spine of the boxes, the box number, the main taxonomic groups that are represented in it and the catalog pages that refer to these groups are always indicated on the left side, and the lower taxonomic groups represented on the right side (Figure 1). The specimens are mounted on pins that are pinned to a base covered by a separate ruled sheet and divided into equidistant columns separated by four vertical lines. Methodically and obsessively, no pin is out of line unless it has been manipulated after Puton.
When the Catalog was published in 1886, Puton asked the publisher for an extra print. From this impression, he cut out the information provided on the catalog sheets and arranged it in the corresponding boxes (Figure 2). Consequently, the boxes include information that is usually provided in catalogs, but not in collections, such as the various names that a species has received. The meticulous correspondence between the Catalog and the boxes is impressive, and gave the collection a static nature, incompatible with the frequent changes in biological classifications. The particularities of this collection generated a great intrigue in me to know who Auguste Puton was or what he was like.
In the bibliography on Auguste Puton we can find that he was born on August 16th, 1834 in a bourgeois family established in Remiremont (Vosges, France). His father, Michael Ernest Puton, was a well-known naturalist and collector and was the one who transmitted, not only to Auguste but also to his brother two years older, his passion for nature and collecting. Puton senior built important geological, paleontological and mineralogical collections. Auguste lost his father when he was 14 years old and at that early age, along with his brother, they followed their father’s naturalistic passions, but in a different field, insects. Both brothers collected insects in the surroundings of Remimeront and sent them to the Museum of the Vosges in Épinal.
Auguste Puton, from a very young age, thus began his activities as an entomologist and became interested in collecting insects. He also began to interact with other entomologists in the region and established a wide network for the exchange of material. He left Remiremont to study medicine in Strasbourg, and then in Paris. As early as 1856, at the age of 22, he was a member of the French Entomological Society.
He received his medical degree in 1859 and returned to his hometown to practice medicine. There is not much record of his activity as a doctor, but there is of his activities as an entomologist. He established links with many of the great entomologists of the time with whom he exchanged material and, in most cases, these entomologists also became his friends. Among them we can mention Martial Étienne Mulsant (French, 1797-1880), Franz Xaver Fieber (German, 1807-1872), Jean-Pierre Omer Anne Edouard Perris (French, 1808-1878), Victor Antoine Signoret (French 1816- 1889), Claudius Rey (French, 1817-1895), Dominique Pierrat (French, 1820-1893), Louis Pandellé (French, 1824-1905), Lucien Lethierry (French, 1830-1894), Henri Marmottan (French, 1832- 1914), Géza Horváth (Hungarian 1847-1937), Ferdinand Reiber (French 1849-1892) and Alfred Chobaut (French, 1860-1926). All these names belong to famous naturalists of the time. Puton himself writes in the preface to the third edition of his 1886 Catalog of Palearctic Hemiptera “almost all the hemipterists of Europe are my friends and, as it were, my collaborators.” He is also a member of the Entomological Societies of Switzerland, Italy, Berlin, and the Imperial and Royal Society for Zoology and Botany in Vienna.
He was somebody for whom his collection was the heart of his life. He did not marry or have children, and all his friends (at least the ones there is record of) were closely related to the collection and to its construction. The impression given is that the collection was his treasure, a place where he took refuge from a young age and where perhaps he found comfort after the death of his father, and where he paid tribute to the passion for nature that he inherited from him. It represented a personal space that was much more than boxes with specimens of bugs, it was a life project, it was his close friend, it was perhaps the child he never had. That may be why it was conceived with such meticulous and obsessive care and order, designed to remain intact throughout the years.
However, there is an interesting discrepancy, or tension in this beautiful collection. An entomological collection must be organized, meticulously but also dynamically. With insects it is frequent that changes in their classification occur, the specimens that make up the collections are being accommodated, moved from place so that they are reordered according to the current classifications. The Puton collection, due to its organization, is difficult to rearrange based on changes in classification that have occurred over the years. It is rigid, it is a written book where, if an element is displaced or erased, it loses part of its essence.
Auguste Puton’s collection reflects his life up to the very end. He published more than 150 works, the last ones at the end of 1898, at which time he abandoned entomology and his collection, but only because sight also abandoned him. In his last years he lived secluded and solitary. Practically completely blind, he sold the collection to the Museum of Natural History in Paris in the years 1909, 1910 and 1912 (Historical Archive). He died in his hometown in 1919 at the age of 85. In the obituary that was published in “The Entomologist’s Monthly Magazine”, 1913, vol. 49 p. 278 it says: “some years before his death he seems to have abandoned entomology and ceased to correspond with his friends.” It seems like a sad ending although it can be seen in another light because he left an immense legacy that served and will serve many generations of entomologists. In a way, he becomes the friend of all those who study this treasure that he built so meticulously, with so much work, dedication, and care. That treasure, Puton’s life project, is still valid and will be for many years, transcending the life of its creator.
Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Aknowledgments
I would like to thank Eric Guilbert for so kindly letting me use his laboratory and made my stay in the museum very interesting and pleasant and to Dominique Pluot-Sigwalt for being so generous with all her vast knowledge of the entomological collection of the MNHN and the relics that are deposited in it. This mission was carried out as part of the European SciCoMove project (MSCA-RISE).
References
Puton A. (1886). Catalogue des Hemipteres (Heteropteres, Cicadides et Psillides) de la faune Paleartique. Troisieme edition. Le Blanc-Hardel, Paris. 1: 100.
Champion, G.C., J.E. Collin, W.W. Fowler, R.W. Lloyd, G.T. Porritt, J.J. Walker (1913) The Entomologist’s Monthly Magazine. vol. XLIX.
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
alexiacomte (September 1, 2023). What is behind Auguste Puton’s exceptional Heteroptera collection? SciCoMove — Scientific Collections on the Move. Retrieved April 28, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/twum