LINN^EAN NOMENCLATURE. 317 



perhaps, the husband as a Trojan,, and making his wife figure 

 in the ranks of the opposing Grecians, or vice versa. 



To talk of Greeks and Trojans in connection with Butterflies, 

 may require a word of explanation to the uninitiated. To such 



then be it known that, for the convenience of arrangement, the 







great Swedish naturalist founded on fabulous and ancient 

 history an allegorical system, wherein Butterflies, divided into 

 sections of Greeks and Trojans, were named after their deities, 

 princes, heroes, nymphs, and plebeians, an ingenious and 

 useful plan, but sometimes involving a curious contradiction 

 and unfitness of terms. It would seem, notwithstanding, 

 that the imaginative inventor of this system sought for, and 

 in many instances found, a sort of emblematic personal analogy 

 between his Butterfly and its classic namesake. The beautiful 

 Papilio Ulyssis * bears, for instance, on its wings, a radiating 

 cerulean disk, which being surrounded on every side by a 

 margin of intense black, gives the idea of light shining in 

 darkness, and this is supposed, not improbably, to have 

 suggested to Linnaeus the insect's fitness to symbolize the wisest 

 of the Greeks in an age of barbarism. The Papilio Priamus 

 in all its regal yet subdued splendor of purple, black, and 

 green, is no unsuited representative of the unhappy Trojan 

 king ; or the yet more glorious Papilio Menelaus in his azure 

 robes, of the magnificent husband of the beauteous Helen ; 

 while the blood-red Nero may be allowed to symbolize the 

 sanguinary Eoman Emperor, 



* A native of India. 



