Zoological Illustrations Series II/Plate 106
LEPTOCIRCUS Curius.
LEPTOCIRCUS Curius,
Clear-winged Butterfly.
Sub. Family Papilionæ. Genus Urania. Sub-genus Leptocircus, Nob. (Erycinian type).
Sub-Generic Characters.
Size and aspect of an Erycina; Anterior wings sub-hyaline; posterior greatly lengthened, and terminating in two long tails; Head, thorax, and body very thick; Anterior feet, palpi, and Antennæ papilioniform.
Specific Character.
Black; the exterior half of the superior wings hyaline, bordered with black, inner half with a green band, continued on the inferior wings, which are plicated, and edged externally with white.
Papilio Curius Fab. Ent. Syst. 3. 1. 28. Don. Ind. Ins. pl. 47. f. 1. bad.
There are only two collections we believe in this country, which possess this rare and extraordinary butterfly, and it may be even doubted whether these specimens do not belong to distinct species. One is in the Banksian cabinet, now possessed by the Linnæan Society, the other in that of the lady of our friend J. G. Children Esq. Zoologist to the British Museum. We are told the species has been "made into a genus" by some continental methodist, but who, according to the disreputable and slovenly mode fast creeping among us, gives no definition. We have elsewhere expressed our reasons for rejecting all such names (North. Zool. 2. pref. lx.), and we are thus pledged to do so upon every occasion.
Nature has so admirably disguised this insect in the external form of that tribe of butterflys which she intends it to represent, that it was only upon looking to its anatomical construction, that we discovered it was a type of the true Papilionæ, and not of the Erycinæ. The construction of the anterior feet, of the head and palpi, and of the antennæ, all which are here represented, magnified, places this fact beyond doubt, and leaves us nothing to desire but a knowledge of its caterpillar and chrysalis, and of the direction of the wings when the species is at rest. We suspect that like those of Urania, they are then deflexed.