INTRODUCTION. 65 
text is so meagre, and an unworthy accompaniment 
of the plates which it professes to explain. For 
this, however, we are not to blame the writer, Cas- 
par Commelin, whose Latinity is excellent ; tho 
lady, engrossed with her drawings, had failed to 
supply him with the requisite materials. 
As an entomological artist, very few have excelled 
Roesel, and at the time his work appeared (17-16 — 
1761) it was unequalled for the truth and beauty 
of its figures. These were chiefly devoted to the 
illustration of the other tribes, although not a few 
foreign moths are also represented, accompanied, in 
several instances, with figures of the caterpillar and 
chrysalis. The faithfulness and delicacy of these 
delineations must have exercised a very beneficial 
effect on the nrts as applied to this subject, by 
affording a high standard wherewith subsequent 
artists might compare their productions. Roesel 
engraved the plates, as well as executed the draw- 
ings, with his own hand, — a combination of skill 
which seems almost indispensable to high excellence 
in this difficult department. 
A most valuable contribution to the history of 
exotic Lepidoptera appeared in 1770- when Drury 
published the first volume of his Illustrations of 
Natural History. A second appeared in 1773 ; the 
third and last in 1782. The whole work contains 
representations of a great number of crepuscular and 
nocturnal Lepidoptera, many of which were previ- 
ously unknown, and a few continue to be unique 
even to the present day. Most of the figures are 
E 
