ENTOMOLOGY. 



Every naturalist is aware that most of the species in this very 

 extensive tribe of insects have been named by all writers from the 

 time of Linnaeus to the present after the heroes and heroines real and 

 imaginary, the fabulous divinities, and beings of mythology, which 

 have been consecrated to fame by Homer and the other poets of the 

 classic ages : those allusions are sometimes happy, but not invariably 

 so. In the present instance it may be observed that Fabricius appears 

 to have named this insect, either in allusion to its dark or clouded 

 appearance surrounding an enlightened disk, or from some fancied 

 resemblance in the surrounding limb to the circumference of a wheel. 

 Pirithous is fabled by the poets to be the son of Ixion and the cloud. 

 Ixion is also reputed to have been fastened to an ever revolving wheel 

 in the realms of Pluto. Some fablers say that when Pirithous dared 

 to enter those regions,. he was tied to the wheel of his father Ixion. 

 To which of these fables Fabricius adverts does not appear, it may 

 possibly be the latter. 



FIG. II. 



PAPILIO POPPEA 

 POPPEA BUTTERFLY. 



Lepidoptera. 



generic character. 



Antennae thicker towards the tip and usually terminating in a 

 kind of club : wings erect when at rest. Fly by day. 



P. Dan. Cand. 



VOL II, N 



