PLATE LIV. 



This singular insect, like many others of the Papilio tribe which 

 we have already introduced to public notice, is a species not a little 

 enveloped in obscurity. Fabricius, when he visited this country 

 about fifty years ago, observed this species in the cabinet of Sir 

 Joseph Banks, and subsequently described it in his work entitled 

 " Species Insectorum," under the name of Papilio Pirithous, with 

 the definition "alis integerrimis supra fuscis, anticis fascia, posticis 

 disco omnibusque subtus albis." He also refers expressly to the 

 Banksian Museum for this insect, and adds that the species is a 

 native of North America. 



It is not less extraordinary than certain, that a species so well 

 defined, and of such magnitude, does not appear in the latter work of 

 this author, his " Entomologia Systematica," nor is there any insect 

 under the same name in that publication. The specimens in the 

 Banksian cabinet had also been by some accident misplaced, and 

 from those circumstances we might, in the absence of other informa- 

 tion, have been led to suspect that its insertion in the first instance 

 must be in some degree unauthorized, and the error corrected in the 

 latter publication. This, however, does not prove to be the case, for 

 the collection of Mr. Jones contained a drawing made from the spe- 

 cimens in the Banksian cabinet, to which the Fabrician name and 

 character, in the hand-writing of that author, was attached ; and thus 

 the identity of the species which that writer had intended stands con- 

 firmed beyond a doubt. Mr. Jones was himself surprised at the 

 omission of the species in Entomologia Systematica," because the 

 existence of the species could not possibly be disputed. The figure 

 delineated in the upper part of the annexed plate is copied from the 

 drawing of Mr. Jones, to which the Fabrician MS. was annexed. 



