The Butterfly Book. W. J. Holland
to know their names, but it is not a sin to forget them.
In writing about butterflies it is quite customary to abbreviate the generic name by giving merely its initial. Thus in writing about the milkweed butterfly, Anosia plexippus, the naturalist will designate it as "A. plexippus." To the specific name he will also attach the name of the man who gave this specific name to the insect. As Linnæus was the first to name this insect, it is proper to add his name, when writing of it, or to add an abbreviation of his name, as follows: "A. plexippus, Linnæus," or "Linn." In speaking about butterflies it is quite common to omit the generic name altogether and to use only the specific name. Thus after returning in the evening from a collecting-trip, I might say, "I was quite successful to-day. I took twenty Aphrodites, four Myrinas, and two specimens of Atlantis." In this case there could be no misunderstanding of my meaning. I took specimens of three species of the genus Argynnis—A. aphrodite, A. myrina, and A. atlantis; but it is quite enough to designate them by the specific names, without reference to their generic classification.
Synonyms.—It is a law among scientific men that the name first given to an animal or plant shall be its name and shall have priority over all other names. Now, it has happened not infrequently that an author, not knowing that a species has been described already, has redescribed it under another name. Such a name applied a second time to a species already described is called a synonym, and may be published after the true name. Sometimes species have had a dozen or more different names applied to them by different writers, but all such names rank as synonyms according to the law of priority.
Popular Names.—Common English names for butterflies are much in vogue in England and Scotland, and there is no reason why English names should not be given to butterflies, as well as to birds and to plants. In the following pages this has been done to a great extent. I have used the names coined by Dr. S.H. Scudder and by others, so far as possible, and have in other cases been forced myself to coin names which seemed to be appropriate, in the hope that they may come ultimately to be widely used. The trouble is that ordinary people do not take pains to observe and note the distinctions which exist among the lower animals. The vocabulary of the common farmer, or even of the ordinary professional man, is bare of terms to point out correctly the different things which come under the eye. All insects are "bugs" to the vulgar, and even the airy butterfly, creature of grace and light, is put into the same category with roaches and fleas. Apropos of the tendency to classify as "bugs" all things which creep and are small, it may be worth while to recall the story, which Frank Buckland tells in his "Log-book of a Fisherman and Naturalist," of an adventure which he had, when a school-boy, at the booking-office of the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway Company in Dover. He had been for a short trip to Paris, and had bought a monkey and a tortoise. Upon his return from sunny France, as he was getting his ticket up to London, Jocko stuck his head out of the bag in which his owner was carrying him. The ticket-agent looked down and said, "You will pay half-fare for him." "How is that?" exclaimed young Buckland. "Well, we charge half-fare for dogs." "But this is not a dog," replied the indignant lad; "this is a monkey." "Makes no difference," was the answer; "you must pay half-fare for him." Reluctantly the silver was laid upon the counter. Then, thrusting his hands into the pocket of his greatcoat, Buckland drew forth the tortoise, and, laying it down, asked, "How much do you charge for this?" The ancient receiver of fares furbished his spectacles, adjusted them to his nose, took a long look, and replied, "We don't charge nothin' for them; them 's insects." It is to be hoped that the reader of this book will in the end have a clearer view of facts as to the classification of animals than was possessed by the ticket-agent at Dover.
CHAPTER IV
BOOKS ABOUT NORTH AMERICAN BUTTERFLIES
Early Writers.—The earliest descriptions of North American butterflies are found in writings which are now almost unknown, except to the close student of science. Linnæus described and named a number of the commoner North American species, and some of them were figured by Charles Clerck, his pupil, whose work entitled "Icones" was published at Stockholm in the year 1759. Clerck's work is exceedingly rare, and the writer believes that he has in his possession the only copy in North America. Johann Christian Fabricius, a pupil of Linnæus, who was for some time a professor in Kiel, and attached to the court of the King of Denmark, published between the year 1775 and the year 1798 a number of works upon the general subject of entomology, in which he gave descriptions, very brief and unsatisfactory, of a number of North American species. His descriptions were written, as were those of Linnæus, in the Latin language. About the same time that Fabricius was publishing his works, Peter Cramer, a Dutchman, was engaged in giving to the world the four large quartos in which he endeavored to figure and describe the butterflies and moths of Asia, Africa, and America. Cramer's work was entitled "Papillons Exotiques," and contained recognizable illustrations of quite a number of the North American forms. The book, however, is rare and expensive to-day, but few copies of it being accessible to American students.
Jacob Hübner, who was born at Augsburg in the year 1761, undertook the publication, in the early part of the present century, of an elaborate work upon the European butterflies and moths, parallel with which he undertook a publication upon the butterflies and moths of foreign lands. The title of his work is "Sammlung Exotischer Schmetterlinge." To this work was added, as an appendix, partly by Hübner and partly by his successor and co-laborer, Karl Geyer, another, entitled "Zuträge zur Sammlung Exotischer Schmetterlinge." The two works together are illustrated by six hundred and sixty-four colored plates. This great publication contains some scattered figures of North American species. A good copy sells for from three hundred and fifty to four hundred dollars, or even more.
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