I Was Very Anxious
To Get It And To Find The Male, Which In This Genus Is Always Of
Extreme Beauty.
During the two succeeding months I only saw it
once again, and shortly afterwards I saw the male flying high in
the air at the mining village.
I had begun to despair of ever
getting a specimen, as it seemed so rare and wild; till one day,
about the beginning of January, I found a beautiful shrub with
large white leafy bracts and yellow flowers, a species of
Mussaenda, and saw one of these noble insects hovering over it,
but it was too quick for me, and flew away. The next clay I went
again to the same shrub and succeeded in catching a female, and
the day after a fine male. I found it to be as I had expected, a
perfectly new and most magnificent species, and one of the most
gorgeously coloured butterflies in the world. Fine specimens of
the male are more than seven inches across the wings, which are
velvety black and fiery orange, the latter colour replacing the
green of the allied species. The beauty and brilliancy of this
insect are indescribable, and none but a naturalist can
understand the intense excitement I experienced when I at length
captured it. On taking it out of my net and opening the glorious
wings, my heart began to beat violently, the blood rushed to my
head, and I felt much more like fainting than I have done when in
apprehension of immediate death.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 46 of 412
Words from 12089 to 12346
of 111511
