ENTOMOLOGY.
PLATE XXIX.
PAPILIO TROS
TROS’S BUTTERFLY.
Lepidoptera.
GENERIC CHARACTER.
Antennæ thicker towards the tip, and generally terminating in a knob: wings erect when at rest. Fly by day.
SPECIFIC CHARACTER
AND
SYNONYMS.
Wings indented, tailed, above and beneath black; on the anterior wings an abbreviated white band: posterior ones with sanguineous spots.
Papilio Tros: alis dentato caudatis concoloribus nigris: anticis fascia abbreviata alba, posticis sanguinea maculari. Fabr. Ent. Syst. T. 3. p. 1. 10. 30.
Jon. fig. pict. 1. tab. 23.
The tribe of Butterflies to which the Papilio now before us appertains, includes many of the larger and more interesting species of the Papiliones known. This tribe, as its designation implies, has been dedicated by Entomologists to the memory of the more distinguished worthies of the Trojan race, and above others to preserve the memory of those heroes whose exploits in the defence of that rich and potent station of the ancient world, the town of Troy, has been commemorated in the Iliad by the immortal Homer. Our present species refers indeed to a Trojan of an earlier period; it is named after Tros, the founder of the Trojan name. Tros was the fifth king of the Trojan dynasty, from its first establishment in the person of Scamander, and the last but three; the destruction of Troy being accomplished under the reign of Priam. The country before the time of Tros was called Dardania, from Dardanus, who is usually stiled the first of the Trojan kings, though in Phrygia he was preceded by Scamander and Teucer. Tros lived about fourteen hundred years before the Christian Era, and reigned king of Troy for the space of sixty years. It is in honour of this Trojan Monarch that Fabricius has given the present insect the name of Papilio Tros.
There are several Papiliones which bear a nearer or more distant resemblance to this Papilio, a circumstance that will impose some caution upon the Entomologist before he can venture to pronounce upon the species with decision: its characters are nevertheless sufficiently conspicuous, and when examined with due attention, enables us to determine the species from its nearest approximations, in a clear and satisfactory manner. The wings are dark above as well as beneath, the deeper colouring prevailing, however, on the upper surface as well as beneath; the anterior wings are marked with a broad abbreviated whitish band, and the lower wings with a large sanguineous or blood red spot of considerable magnitude. This sanguineous spot from lying in the disk of the wing is traversed and divided by the black nerves of the wing in such a manner as to appear in the form of six distinct oblong spots, placed laterally to each other: these spots appear also on the lower surface, in the same form as above, but the colour is rather paler.
As there is no figure extant of this large and fine Papilio in the work of any author, the delineation which we have the pleasure on this occasion to submit before our readers will doubtlessly be viewed with peculiar satisfaction. It need be only added that the species has been definitively determined upon the authority of Mr. Jones’s collection of original drawings, to which Fabricius so constantly refers, and that for this reason its specific appellation may be implicitly upon by the scientific Entomologist.
This interesting Papilio is a native of Brazil.