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Post by Deleted on Sept 18, 2017 16:34:43 GMT
One of the worst for fading is horishanus
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Post by nomad on Apr 1, 2018 15:49:35 GMT
Alfred Russell Wallace was without doubt one of the most famous naturalists of all time. One of the treasures of the Oxford University Museum is the male of holotype of Troides Plato described by Wallace in 1865 ; In his brief description in the Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, he placed this species in the genus Ornithoptera. Although Wallace's discovery of Ornithoptera croesus greatly affected him, the discovery of ths black and yellow birdwing in Timor did not warrant a mention in The Malay Archipelago (1869). He captured the single specimen. Troides Plato. Holotype. Timor, A.R. Wallace. OUMNH.
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Post by nomad on Apr 2, 2018 19:39:47 GMT
"During my very first walk into the forest at Bachian, I had seen sitting on a leaf out of reach, an immense butterfly of a dark colour marked with white and yellow spots. I could not capture it as it flew away high up into the forest, but I at once saw it was a female of a new species of Ornithoptera or "bird winged butterfly," the pride of the Eastern tropics. 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 a male flying high in the air at the mining village. I had begun to dispair of ever getting a specimen, as it seemed 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 Mussandra, and saw one of these noble insects hovering over it, but it was too quick for me, and flew away. The next day 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 expected, a perfectly new and most magnificent species and one of the most gorgeously coloured butterflies in the world. Fine species of the male are more than seven inches across the wings, which are velvety black and fiery orange, the latter 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 the net and opening those glorious wings, my heart began to beat violently, the blood rushed to my head, and I felt much more like fainting than I had done when in apprehension of immediate death. I had a headache the rest of the day, so great was the excitement produced by what will appear to most people a very inadequate cause."Alfred Russel Wallace. Discovery of Ornithoptera croesus. The Malay Archipelago, 1869. Below two types of O. croesus in the Oxford collection. Wallace Bacan, 1859. Copyright OUMNH.
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