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[ 507 ] 



XV. Observations on the Uraniidce, a Family of Lepidopterous Insects, with a Syti&pm 

 of the Family and a Monograph q/" Coronidia, one of the Genera of which it is 

 comjwsed. By J. O. Westwood, Jf.A., F.L.S., &c. 



(Plates LXXXV.-LXXXVIII.) 



Received March 18th, read April 16th, 1878. 



It is now more than forty years ago since there appeared in the Transactions of this 

 Society a memoir by Mr. W. S. MacLeay, and a notice in the ' Annales ' of the French 

 Entomological Society by M. Boisduval, in which were first made known the trans- 

 formations of two of the most splendid of Lepidopterous insects. These insects had, 

 up to that time, been regarded by most writers as butterflies, but were proved, by the 

 details then made known, to belong to the Heterocerous division of the order, although 

 their day-flying habits, and the extraordinary brilliancy of their colours, had naturally 

 led to their having been considered as belonging to the Rhopalocera or true butterflies. 



M. Boisduval has well described one of these insects as " ce magnifique Lepidoptere, 

 le plus beau de la creation." Hence, as well as in consequence of the singular manner 

 in which systematic writers on the order have treated the position of the different 

 members of the group to which these brilliant insects belong, and their interesting 

 metamorphoses, it will not be considered irrelevant to the special subject of this me- 

 moir to enter into some details upon the subject, more especially as some very difficult 

 questions as to the rules of nomenclature are involved in the inquiry. 



Amongst the species of his great genus Pajnlio, containing the whole of the day- 

 flying Lepidoptera, Linna;us introduced Pajjilio leilus, P. orontes, P. pafroclus, and P. 

 lunus, to which were added in the last century Papilio rhipheus by Drury, and P. 

 sloanus and P. empedocles by Cramer. Another species belonging to this group was 

 added by Cramer, but regarded by him as a moth, under the name of Phalcena orithea. 



In 1807 there appeared in the sixth volume of Illiger's Magazine a posthumous 

 sketch of the proposed division of the Lepidoptera into genera by Fabricius, who had 

 previous to his death published his separate works on the Coleoptera {Eleutherata, 

 F.), Hymenoptera (Piezata, F.), Diptera (Antliata, F.), and Hemiptera (Ehyngota, F.), 

 in which each of these orders of insects had been cut up into very numerous genera. 

 In this sketch of the Lepidoptera' Fabricius placed at the head of the order (followed 

 by the other numerous genera of butterflies) his new genus Urania, shortly charac- 



' Mr. J. G. Children published an English abstract of the proposed system of Fabricius in the ' Philosophical 

 Magazine and Annals ' for February 1830. 



VOL. X. — PART XII. No. 1. — June \st, 1879. 4 a 



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