650 EXTERNAL ANATOMY OF INSECTS, 
can conceive this animal to appear like a planet in full 
radiance, and under eclipse, as its wings open and shut 
in the blaze of a tropical sun: another butterfly, Papilio 
Ulysses, by its radiating cerulean disk, surrounded on 
every side by a margin intensely black, gives the idea of 
light first emerging from primeval obscurity; it was pro- 
bably this idea of light shining in darkness that induced 
Linné to give it the name of the wisest of the Greeks in 
a dark and barbarous age. I know no insect upon which 
the sight rests with such untired pleasure, as upon the 
lovely butterfly that bears the name of the unhappy 
Trojan king (P. Priamus); the contrast of the rich green 
and black of the velvet of its wings with each other, and 
with the orange of its abdomen, is beyond expression 
regal and magnificent. But peculiar beauties of colour 
sometimes distinguish whole ¢rzbes as well as individuals. 
What can be more lovely than that tribe of little butter- 
flies that flit around us every where in our summer ram- 
bles, which are called blues, and which exhibit the va- 
rious tints of the sky? Polyommatus Adonis of this tribe 
scarcely yields to any exotic butterfly in the celestial 
purity of its azure wings: our native coppers also, Lycena 
Hippothoe*, Virgauree, &c., are remarkable for the ful- 
gid colour of these organs; in Argynnis the upper side 
of their wings is tawny, spotted with black, while the 
under side of the secondary ones is very often adorned 
by the appearance of silver spots. How this remarkable 
effect of metallic lustre, so often reflected by spots in the 
wings of butterflies, is produced, seems not to have oc- 
cupied the attention of Entomologists. M. Audebert is 
* Priare I). Ere: 1. 
