XXI. A few Remarks tending to illustrate the Natural History of two Annulose Genera, 
viz. Urania of Fabricius, and Mygale of Walckenaer. By W. S. MacLeay, Esq., 
F.Z.S., &c. 
Communicated January 28, 1834. 
AS the following remarks may possibly be of use in our attempts to solve a problem 
which has long interested entomologists, I mean the true situation in nature of the 
genus Urania, they are now placed with all due respect at the disposal of the Zoolo- 
gical Society. 
Fabricius instituted a genus of Lepidoptera under the name of Urania’, a term by no 
means inappropriate, as it designates perhaps the highest fliers and most richly orna- 
mented insects of that very brilliant order. Before Fabricius these animals had been 
placed in the great Linnzan group called Papilio, although they differ, in fact, from all 
Butterflies in the form of their antenne, which, at least in the American species of the 
genus, instead of being in any degree clavate, are at the base filiform, and then become 
gradually setiform or attenuated towards their extremity. Latreille referred these in- 
sects to the same section of the Linnean group Papilio as Hesperia, and here they still 
remain. My object at present not being to enter on the investigation of their affinities, 
I shall with little farther preface give the natural history of one species, which appears 
to me to be possibly new. But it must be recollected that I have here, in Cuba, no 
general cabinet for reference, and consequently want the most indispensable of all 
guides towards the accurate determination of new species. 
As far as I have been able to ascertain, the only known Uranie with which my in- 
sect can be confounded are the Ur. Sloanus of Godart, a Jamaica species, so called from 
having been first described by Sir Hans Sloane, and the Ur. Boisduvalu of M. Guérin. 
A figure of this last is published in the ‘ Iconographie du Régne Animal de M. Cuvier;’ 
but as the larva and imago of Uranie vary in their size and colours, the Ur. Boisduvalii 
may very probably be found eventually to be merely a small variety of the well known 
Ur. Sloanus ; nay, farther, my insect, of which I am about to give the history, may 
even turn out to be the same species with both. Unfortunately, as I said before, I 
have no Jamaica specimens of Ur. Sloanus at hand to refer to; but had there been 
given with the figure a scientific description of the Ur. Boisduvalit, distinguishing it from 
Ur. Sloanus, or even had its country been mentioned, we might have been more certain 
of our facts. Two slovenly practices at present prevail, which threaten to destroy all 
' Urania is also a name given by Schreber to a genus of Monocotyledonous plants, previously called Rave- 
nala by Adanson, Jussieu, and Sonnerat, and which belongs to the same natural family with the Banana. 
VOL. I. 2B 
