INSECTS IN THEIR TERFECT STATE. 139 



of which the tents were made ; and this cloth may 

 have been made from the Papyrus plant and the 

 name have been originally Papayrion. At all events, 

 it seems probable that the appearance of a cloth-like 

 texture exhibited by the wings of a White Butterfly 

 may have led to the adoption of a name from this 

 or a similar origin, which may have been the root of 

 the Latin word Papilio, as used by Pliny to designate 

 the Butterfly. It has also been suggested that the 

 Greek term Papilion meant likewise a sail (perhaps 

 of a cloth like that of the tent), to which the wings 

 of the White Butterfly may justly be compared. 

 Indeed, at a later period of the Roman Empire, 

 when the term Papilio had long been established 

 as the popular name of the Butterfly, Vegetius, 

 in his work on the "Art of War," dedicated to the 

 Emperor Valcntinian, speaks of a kind of sails 

 which were doubtless, as explained in the glossary, 

 those which by their position resembled the wings 

 of a Butterfly, just as do the modern lateen sails 

 still used in the Mediterranean, which certainly 

 recall the form of those of the common White 

 Butterfly when about half expanded. 



Thus it is pretty plain that we have received 

 from the Greeks both a poetic and prosaic term for 

 the Butterfly ; the first founded on the mystery of 



