The Naturalist's Repository, Volume 1 (of 5): or Monthly Miscellany of Exotic Natural History: etc. etc.Donovan, E. (Edward)
Science
The Naturalist's Repository, Volume 1 (of 5): or Monthly Miscellany of Exotic Natural History: etc. etc.
Donovan, E. (Edward)
Zoology -- Pictorial works
The tribe of Butterflies to which the Papilio now before us appertains,
includes many of the larger and more interesting species of the
Papiliones known. This tribe, as its designation implies, has been
dedicated by Entomologists to the memory of the more distinguished
worthies of the Trojan race, and above others to preserve the memory of
those heroes whose exploits in the defence of that rich and potent
station of the ancient world, the town of Troy, has been commemorated in
the Iliad by the immortal Homer. Our present species refers indeed to a
Trojan of an earlier period; it is named after Tros, the founder of the
Trojan name. Tros was the fifth king of the Trojan dynasty, from its
first establishment in the person of Scamander, and the last but three;
the destruction of Troy being accomplished under the reign of Priam. The
country before the time of Tros was called Dardania, from Dardanus, who
is usually stiled the first of the Trojan kings, though in Phrygia he
was preceded by Scamander and Teucer. Tros lived about fourteen hundred
years before the Christian Era, and reigned king of Troy for the space
of sixty years. It is in honour of this Trojan Monarch that Fabricius
has given the present insect the name of Papilio Tros.
There are several Papiliones which bear a nearer or more distant
resemblance to this Papilio, a circumstance that will impose some
caution upon the Entomologist before he can venture to pronounce upon
the species with decision: its characters are nevertheless sufficiently
conspicuous, and when examined with due attention, enables us to
determine the species from its nearest approximations, in a clear and
satisfactory manner. The wings are dark above as well as beneath, the
deeper colouring prevailing, however, on the upper surface as well as
beneath; the anterior wings are marked with a broad abbreviated whitish
band, and the lower wings with a large sanguineous or blood red spot of
considerable magnitude. This sanguineous spot from lying in the disk of
the wing is traversed and divided by the black nerves of the wing in
such a manner as to appear in the form of six distinct oblong spots,
placed laterally to each other: these spots appear also on the lower
surface, in the same form as above, but the colour is rather paler.
As there is no figure extant of this large and fine Papilio in the work
of any author, the delineation which we have the pleasure on this
occasion to submit before our readers will doubtlessly be viewed with
peculiar satisfaction. It need be only added that the species has been
definitively determined upon the authority of Mr. Jones’s collection of
original drawings, to which Fabricius so constantly refers, and that for
this reason its specific appellation may be implicitly upon by the
scientific Entomologist.
This interesting Papilio is a native of Brazil.
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[Illustration:
_30_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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