- Nabokov has hunted butterflies his whole life, although his collection from the early parts of his life were lost to wars and upheavals. His specimens from later in life reside now in museums.
- So long and storied is his hunting, there are butterflies and moths named after him, including Nabokov's Pug, a moth he found in Utah, of all places.
- "Few things indeed have I known in the way of emotion or appetite, ambition or achievement, that could surpass in richness and strength the excitement of entomological exploration." (6.3.3)
- Butterfly hunting offers Nabokov solitude, and a reason to be alone.
- When Vladimir is fourteen, he has a sleepover visit from a schoolmate who he likes very much. Still, he does everything in his power to escape in the morning to go on his regular butterfly expedition, no questions asked. He is a poor host, perhaps, but a really, really dedicated lepidopterist.
- Mademoiselle tells him that Jean-Jacques Rousseau (the great Enlightenment-Era Thinker) declared the study of plants more important than the study of insects. Then she sits down in an armchair, only to crush several of his specimens. Vladimir is inconsolable! For so many reasons! Although Mademoiselle makes a special trip to St. Petersburg, just to replace the specimens, her offering is just some moth everyone has.
- Later, Mademoiselle will recount the story to Vladimir, saying, you were so happy to have the new specimens I brought you! As far as Nabokov is concerned, this is just another of her convenient revisions.
- Vladimir finds there are well-meaning fools everywhere: a doctor near Vyra allows a rare moth specimen to be eaten by a mouse, and tries to pass off a more common specimen as the real thing. A boy who works in the Vyra kitchen borrows his butterfly net and misuses it.
- Nabokov looks to the major Russian poets for butterfly imagery, and finds verse by Ivan Bunin and Afanásy Fet. In French verse, he finds Alfred de Musset, and in English, Robert Browning.
- Pretty much no one except lepidopterists even notice butterflies, Nabokov laments.
- Worse, even being a butterfly collector makes you look like a weirdo to other people.
- In 1910, Vladimir goes on a country walk with his father and a family friend, a former President of the Parliament, who says: "Come with us by all means, but do not chase butterflies, child. It spoils the rhythm of the walk." (6.3.11)
- Eight years later, he is almost arrested for supposedly signaling a British warship with his net.