230 PAPILTONID^i: — BUTTERFLIES. 



which they cany round to sell ; each box bringing half a 

 piastre. Of tlic Butterflies, which were the principal in- 

 sects thus sold, he enumerates twenty-one species.^ 



The Chinese children make Butterflies of paper, with 

 which " they play after night by sending them, like kites, 

 into the air."^ 



We learn from Captain Stedman, that even in the forests 

 of Guiana, some people make Butterfly-catching their busi- 

 ness, and obtain much money by it. They collect and 

 arrange them in paper boxes, and send them off to the dif- 

 ferent cabinets of Europe.^ 



Butterflies are now extensively worn by French and 

 American ladies on their head-dresses. 



From the relations of Sir Anthony Shirley, quoted in 

 Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy,'^ we learn that the kings 

 of Persia were wont to hawk after Butterflies with sparrows 

 and stares, or starlings, trained for the purpose ; and Ave 

 are also told that M. de Luisnes (afterward Prime Min- 

 ister of France), in the nonage of Louis XIII. , gained much 

 upon him by making hawks catch little birds, and by mak- 

 ing some of those little birds again catch Butterflies.^ 



In the Zoological Journal, No. 13, it is recorded that at 

 a meeting of the Linn^ean Society, March 11, 1832, Mr. 

 Stevens exhibited a remarkable freak of nature in a speci- 

 men of Vanessa urtica, which possessed five wings, the 

 additional one being formed by a second, but smaller, 

 hinder wing on one side.*^ 



J. A. de Mandelsloe, who made a voyage to the East 

 Indies in 1639, tells us that not far from the Fort of Ter- 

 nate grows a certain shrub, called by the Indians Catopa, 

 from which falls a leaf, which, by degrees, is supposed to be 

 metamorphosed into a Butterfly^ 



De Pauw tells us that, not long before his time, the 

 French peasants entertained a kind of worship for the chry- 

 salis of the caterpillar found on the great nettle (the pupa 

 of Vanessa cardai?), because they fcincied that it revealed 

 evident traces of Divinity ; and quotes M. Des Landes in 



1 Osbeck, Travels, i. 331. 2 ji^i^^ i. 324, 



3 Stedman, Surinam, i. 279. Cf. Bancroft, Guiana, p. 229. 



^ Anat. of Melanch., 1G51, p. 208. 



5 Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, p. 134, 



6 The Mirror, xxv. IGO. 



T Harris's Col. of Voy. and Trav., i. 790. 



