Methinks a view of these earthly creatures can the better enable one to appreciate the ineffable glories of the heavenly beings. Even the earth-insect is beautiful beyond the power of words to describe—how much more so the heavenly angel!
When the study of entomology first rose to the dignity of a science, it was found necessary that each insect should be distinguished by a definite title. Formerly, it was necessary to describe the insect when speaking of it; and in consequence both cabinets and memories were overloaded with words.
For example, the Meadow-brown Butterfly was named “Papilio media alis superioribus superne media parte rufis”. In English: “The middle-sized butterfly, the centre of whose upper wings are reddish on the upper surface”. Cromwell’s Puritan soldier might have taken a lesson in nomenclature from an entomologist cabinet; and it is not easy to say which would occupy the greater time in reading, the list of butterflies or the regimental roll-call. These difficulties being patent, the nomenclators leaped at once, as is the habit of human nature, into the opposite extreme; and so, instead of making an insect name an elaborate description of its appearance, gave it a title which did not describe it at all, and would have been just as applicable to any other insect. Old Homer’s pages afforded a valuable treasury of names; and accordingly, Greek and Trojan may reasonably be astonished to find their names again revived on earth.
Even our British butterflies have appropriated Homeric titles. For example, the two first on the list are named Machaon and Podalirius, known to students of Homer as the two medical officers that accompanied the Greek army.
Numerous, however, as are the Homeric heroes and heroines, the insects far outnumbered them. So, after exhausting Homer, the dramatists were called into requisition, and plundered of their “personæ”. Fiction failing, history, or that which is dignified by the name of history, was next sought; and kings, queens, generals, and statesmen lent their names to swell the insect catalogue.
The Latin authors now are required to make up the deficiency, Terence being especially useful. We have in our English list Davus, Pamphilus, and Chrysis, all out of one play, the “Andria”.
At last, when Greek and Latin, prose and verse, history and mythology, had been quite exhausted, some enterprising and imaginative men boldly invented new names for new insects. The import of the name was of no consequence to them, and any harmonious combination of syllables was all that they required. Many a valuable hour have they wasted, or rather caused others to waste, in seeking through lexicons and dictionaries for the purpose of discovering the derivation of those unmeaning and underived names.
At last men of science began to see that the name ought to be descriptive of the creature, or its habits, and yet as short as possible; and when this idea was matured, true nomenclature began. In the reformed system, insects are gathered together in societies, through which some general characteristic runs, and each individual bears the name of its genus, as the society is called; and also a second name that distinguishes its species.
The first butterfly which will be mentioned in these pages is seen figured on [plate D], fig. 4; and very appropriately bears the name of Atalanta. Those skilled in mythology, or Mangnall’s skimmings thereof, will remember that Atalanta was a young lady, so swift of foot that she could run over the sea without splashing her ankles, or on the corn-fields without bending an ear of corn under her weight. The flight of this butterfly is so easy and graceful, that poetical entomologists invested it with the name of the swift-footed Atalanta.
Also it is called the Scarlet-Admiral, in which two names is to be seen the confusion respecting sexes which is found in nautical matters generally. Perhaps the discrepancy might have been avoided by calling the butterfly Cleopatra, that lady being her own admiral.