Back to the line where you reading.
Above: an Agrias butterfly, on which Ms. Motta performed the spreading of the wings. A decent Agrias specimen should look like the one shown on the right. This is a butterfly on which I did the spreading myself around the time of my museum's opening 20 years ago. The splendid original colors are still extant.
On the left: a newspaper article published in the Tokyo Shimbun on Sept. 25, 2003. The source of information was INPA, who ludicrously overrated the value of the butterfly to be a hundred thousand dollars. But in actuality, the butterfly is worth a few tens of dollars. I guess that the reason for such overvaluation was to play up the negative image of me whom they were accusing of smuggling precious insects. How can I tell? Because I am quite positive that the very specimen shown in the article was one of the specimens they took away from me.
