The Butterfly Book: A Popular Guide to a Knowledge of the Butterflies of North AmericaHolland, W. J. (William Jacob)
Science
The Butterfly Book: A Popular Guide to a Knowledge of the Butterflies of North America
Holland, W. J. (William Jacob)
Butterflies -- North America
The first work which was devoted exclusively to an account of the
lepidoptera of North America was published in England by Sir James
Edward Smith, who was a botanist, and who gave to the world in two
volumes some of the plates which had been drawn by John Abbot, an
Englishman who lived for a number of years in Georgia. The work appeared
in two folio volumes, bearing the date 1797. It is entitled "The Natural
History of the Rarer Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia." It contains one
hundred and four plates, in which the insects are represented in their
various stages upon their appropriate food-plants. Smith and Abbot's
work contains original descriptions of only about half a dozen of the
North American butterflies, and figures a number of species which had
been already described by earlier authors. It is mainly devoted to the
moths. This work is now rare and commands a very high price.
The next important work upon the subject was published by Dr. J.A.
Boisduval of Paris, a celebrated entomologist, who was assisted by Major
John E. Leconte. The work appeared in the year 1833, and is entitled
"Histoire Générale et Monographie des Lepidoptères et des Chenilles de
l'Amérique Septentrionale." It contains seventy-eight colored plates,
each representing butterflies of North America, in many cases giving
figures of the larva and the chrysalis as well as of the perfect insect.
The plates were based very largely upon drawings made by John Abbot, and
represent ninety-three species, while in the text there are only
eighty-five species mentioned, some of which are not figured. What has
been said of all the preceding works is also true of this: it is very
rarely offered for sale, can only be found upon occasion, and commands a
high price.
In the year 1841 Dr. Thaddeus William Harris published "A Report on the
Insects of Massachusetts which are Injurious to Vegetation." This work,
which was originally brought out in pursuance of an order of the
legislature of Massachusetts, by the Commissioners of the Zoölogical and
Botanical Survey of the State, was republished in 1842, and was followed
by a third edition in 1852. The last edition, revised and improved by
Charles L. Flint, Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of
Agriculture, appeared in 1862. This work contains a number of figures
and descriptions of the butterflies of New England, and, while now
somewhat obsolete, still contains a great deal of valuable information,
and is well worth being rescued by the student from the shelves of the
second-hand book-stalls in which it is now and then to be found. For the
New England student of entomology it remains to a greater or less extent
a classic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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