Alfred Russel Wallace 



evening inspection of the orchids, etc., in the glass case 

 when a largish insect flew by my face, and when it settled 

 it looked like a handsome moth or butterfly. It was brilliant 

 orange on the lower wings, the upper being shaded orange 

 brown, very moth-like, but the antennae were clubbed like 

 a butterfly's. At first I thought it was a butterfly that 

 mimicked a moth, but I had never seen anything like it 

 before. 



Next morning I got a glass jar half filled with bruised 

 laurel leaves, and Ma got it in, and after a day or two 

 I set it, clumsily, and meant to take it to London, but 

 had no small box to put it in. I told Mr. Rothschild 

 about it, and he said it sounded like a Castnia — curious 

 South American moths very near to butterflies. So he got 

 out the drawer with them, but mine was not there; then 

 he got another drawer half-empty, and there it was — only a 

 coloured drawing, but exactly like. It had been described, 

 but neither the Museum nor Mr. Rothschild had got it ! I 

 had had the orchids nearly a year and a half, so it must 

 have been in the chrysalis all that time and longer, which 

 Mr. Rothschild said was the case w^ith the Castnias. On 

 going home I searched, and found the brown chrysalis-case 

 it had come out of among the roots of the same orchid 

 the little Longicornes had dropped from. It is, I am pretty 

 sure, a Brazilian species, and I have written to ask Mr. 

 Hall if he knows where it came from. I have sent the moth 

 and chrysalis to Prof. Poulton (I had promised it to him at 

 the lecture) for the Oxford collection, and he is greatly 

 pleased with it; and especially with its history — one quite 

 small bit of an orchid, after more than a year in a green- 

 house, producing a rare or new beetle and an equally rare 

 moth ! . . . 



I am glad to say I feel really better than any time the 

 last ten years. — A. R. W. 



130 



