Dick Vane-Wright will give a very brief account of the origins of his own passion for butterflies, followed by a short assessment of what he considers to be the failures as well as successes of his own contributions to rhopalocerology. Then, taking a wider view of the subject, he will crystal-ball-gaze as to where our collective infatuation for these creatures might take us. In particular, he would like to pose the question, what is conserved in evolution, the genotype or the phenotype—and can DNA ever be a proper subject for a biologist?