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. Linnaeus 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 Linnaeus, 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 Linnaeus, 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 recog- 

 nizable 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 Hubner, 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 " Samm- 



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