THE HISTOEY 



OF OUR 



BRITISH BUTTERFLIES. 



By C. W. DALE, 

 Glanvilles Wootton. 



Family PAPILIONID-flU . 



Who loves not the gay Butterfly, which flits 



Before him in the ardent noon, array'd 



In crimson, azure, emerald, and gold ; 



With more magnificence upon his wing — 



The little wing — than ever grac'd the robe 



Gorgeous of royalty ; is like the kine 



That wander mid the flowers which gem the meadows, 



Unconscious of their beauty. 



Carrington, Dartmoor. 



Genus I, PAPILIO. 

 Auctorum. 



Papilio — The Latin word for Butterfly. 



Linnaeus first attempted to combine in some degree Natural and Civil His- 

 tory, by attaching the names of personages, illustrious in their day, to insects 

 of particular kinds. His first division of the Butterflies consists of Equites 

 (Knights), and these are sub-divided into Troes and Achivi (Trojans and 

 Greeks). Our British species belong to the latter division. 



Linnaeus included the whole of the Butterflies under the generic name 

 Papilio, but he only knew 260 species, whereas 7695 are included in Kirov' s 

 Catalogue of 1871. The name is now restricted to the Swallow-tails, which 

 having a larger number of species than any other — over 500 species, although 

 only four occur in Europe — and many of them being amongst the largest and 

 most beautiful of the Butterflies, still give the name a deserved precedence. 



The characters of the genus may be described thus : antennee rather long, 

 moderately thick ; fore-wings long, with arched costa ; hind-wings with the 

 margin toothed, and a prolonged tail. 



