Page:Jardine Naturalist's Library Foreign Butterflies.djvu/271

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RHIPHEUS DASYCEPHALUS.
207

ties presented by Drury's figure; but it is likely that different opinions will be held on the subject. The following are Mr. Swainson's observations:—"If the imagination was taxed to invent, or to concentrate into one figure all that was splendid, lovely, or rare in the insect world, Nature would far exceed the poor invention of man by the production of this incomparably splendid creature; its rarity also is so great, that but one specimen has ever been seen. It is not, however, on this account only that we have been induced to copy this figure, but because its illustration will clear up one of the most intricate and perplexing questions that has hitherto impeded the natural arrangement of the Linnæan Papiliones, and even of the whole order of the Lepidoptera.

"The error of Cramer regarding Rhipheus has already been rectified. It will now be demonstrated that not only are the two insects distinct as species, but that they actually belong to different genera; Cramer's being a Urania of Fabricius and Latreille, while Drury's is a Papilio of the same authors. This is proved by the figures, and confirmed by the following words of Drury:—'The antennæ are black, and knobbed at their extremities,' in other words, clavate; while the palpi, as expressed in the figure, are so small as not to project beyond the head, where they lie hid among the frontal hairs; this also being a typical distinction of the Latreillian Papiliones. The figures in Drury's work were all drawn and engraved by Moses Harris, well known