The Monarch

Back to books.

On our bookshelves we have a copy of "A History of British Butterflies" by the Rev. Francis Orpen Morris, a vicar and entmologist who lived and worked in East Yorkshire. The history of British Butterflies was first published in 1852. My copy is the rather later, enlarged and revised, 8th edition from 1895 (two year's after Morris had died). I have mixed feelings about this book.

On the one hand it is an astonishing volume, containing 79 'plates', each of which is hand-coloured, showing in perfect detail the eggs, larvae, pupae, caterpillars, side, underside and top views of each of the butterflies, both male and female (where appropriate) at life size. Most of the species are familiar to us today; some are familiar but have quite different names and others are unknown. Who has seen, for example, the Rock-Eyed Underwing, the Silver-bordered Ringlet, Albin's Hampstead Eye, the Greasy Fritillary, the Brighton Argus or the Cliffden Blue?

On the other hand, the fact is that these fantastic illustrations were made not in the field but from captured specimens killed and pinned in display cabinets. Indeed, the last 20 or so pages of the book, the "Aphorismata Entomologica", describe and illustrate in detail the processes involved in collecting, preserving and displaying butterflies, moths and so forth.

Now of course we have digital photography with which to 'capture' our images, but unfortunately many butterflies have become highly scarce or disappeared altogether.