360 Observations on Madame Merian^s 



the name of A'ttacus Wilson?/. Indeed, I am not certain if 

 it be not the very same. However, the coarse colouring and 

 engraving will always render it impossible to determine this 

 point. The flowers, with their strange subcoriaceous enve- 

 lope, and the young fruit of the plantain (Mus« paradisiaca 

 Zv.), are tolerably well designed, though, even in a folio work, 

 justice can hardly be done to these wonderful vegetable pro- 

 ductions, which may well be thought worthy of paradise, and 

 the names they bear [as paradisiaca, sapientum, ornata, su- 

 perba]. I have commenced a Pomona on atlas sheets, whose 

 size will enable me to depict the larger products of our 

 gardens. Nine sheets I have devoted to the bread fruit 

 ( Artocarpus incisa L.) alone, and its varieties, and yet I have 

 not done it so completely as I have wished. How, then, shall 

 we expect, in small-sized works, figures which can give to the 

 European any tolerable idea of the more splendid gifts of 

 Flora? 



Plate 13. contains the larva, pupa, and two figures of an 

 undescribed Hesperia ? The larva is a remarkable object : 

 instead of being spiny, as represented, I should rather think 

 the back must have been clothed with fallen flowers ; the ap- 

 pearance of the filaments and anthers is very clear. I have 

 in spirits a lepidopterous larva, the processes of whose back 

 are tipped with the yellow anthers on which it fed ; a covering 

 adapted for concealment, and not more wonderful than the 

 stercoraceous coat worn by the cannibal larvae of several 

 orders, and by some small land testaceous Mollusca, and 

 which protects them from birds, by giving them the appear- 

 ance of the dung of bats. The plant is rudely done, and 

 infamously coloured : the fruit should have been yellow. Can 

 it be the hog plum (»Sp6ndias Myrobalanus L.) of the An- 

 tilles ? A useless plant. 



Plate 14. The three central figures belong to a white and 

 colourless unknown moth, sent me from Demerara. The 

 three exterior ones represent an undetermined ASphinjr, very 

 nearly approaching S. Carolina, but, without doubt, distinct, 

 especially as far as regards the larva. A common and neg- 

 lected, but delicious, West Indian fruit, the Anbtia muricata 

 L.i or soursop, is very correctly drawn. 



Plate 1 5. has three figures of the larva, cocoon, and imago 

 of a black nocturnal moth, which does not seem to have 

 occurred to other writers. The larva is remarkable for its 

 quadrate bulky outline, and the hairy blunt processes of the 

 extremities, and the slime said to accompany it. Our fair 

 author is not the first entomologist who has been disappointed 

 in the expectation of something splendid after the metamor- 



