A full description of this insect soon appeared in the author’s “Lepidoptera Exotica,” accompanied by a plate; both were afterward republished in the “Geological Magazine.” In fig. 4 we reproduce fig. 1 of his plates, representing the neuration of Palæontina; and in fig. 5, fig. 2 of his plates, subsequently copied by “The Graphic.” A description of the genus and species is first given, which it is unnecessary to reproduce here; afterward, the following remarks:
“[126] Though a British insect, this species belongs to a group so completely tropical that I do not hesitate to describe and figure it in the present work; its nearest allies are the genera Caligo, Dasyophthalma and Brassolis, all three essentially tropical American genera.
Fig. 5.
Palæontina oolitica Butl. Facsimile of Butler’s first sketch.
“P. oolitica is especially interesting, as being the oldest fossil butterfly yet discovered; the most ancient previously known to science having been found in the Cretaceous series (white sandstone of Aix-la-Chapelle[BA]), whilst the bulk of the known species are from the Lower Miocene beds of Croatia; it is also interesting as belonging to the highest family of butterflies, and to a subfamily intermediate in [127] character between two others, namely, the Satyrinæ and Nymphalinæ, whilst the more recently discovered fossils are referable, with one exception, to the two latter groups. The nervures appear to have been impregnated with iron, which will partly account for their well-defined condition.”
Happening to be in London not long after the publication of the description and illustration of this insect, I took pains to make a very careful examination both of the original specimen, which Mr. Charlesworth kindly allowed me to study at my leisure, and of its reverse, which is preserved in the School of Mines, Jermyn street. I mentioned to Mr. Butler and to others, my conviction that the insect was to be considered homopterous rather than lepidopterous, and on my return to America, exhibited before the Natural History Society of Boston, drawings which I had made from the originals; my comments at that time were published very briefly, as I was reserving the proof of my statements for the present paper. Mr. Butler, however, was induced by this publication[BB] to examine the reverse at the Jermyn street Museum, and although he had been supplied by me with a rough tracing of the drawing I had taken of it, he failed to be convinced of any mistake, and published a paper in defence of his own view in the Geological Magazine for October, 1874. In this paper he gives new drawings of the insect, quotes portions of letters in which I had expressed my opinions upon the nature of the fossil, gives the remarks referred to from the “Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History,” and makes, among others, the following comments.
Fig. 6.
Palæontina oolitica Butl. Facsimile of Butler’s second sketch.