Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.11826

    Moths in general

    Date
    1850
    Creator - Organisation
    Benham and Reeve, Printer
    After
    L M Budgen (British) , Illustrator
    Object type
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (print): 200mm
    width (print): 132mm
    Subject
    Content object
    nature
       > animal
          > insect
    Description
    Moths shown against a moonlit sky and framed by an ivy-clad ruined Gothic window.

    All are British species or visitors, including (clockwise from lower left): the Convolvulus hawk-moth Agrius convolvuli; the Puss moth Cerura vinula; the Death’s head hawk-moth Acherontia atropos; the Herald Scoliopteryx libatrix; the Buff-tip Phalera bucephala; the Swallow-tailed moth Ourapteryx sambucaria; the Currant clearwing Synanthedon tipuliformis; the Angle shades Phlogophora meticulosa; the Magpie Abraxas grossulariata; the Bark-clothes moth Tinea corticella; the Emperor moth Saturnia pavonia; the Goat moth Cossus cossus; and the Red underwing Catocala nupta.

    Frontispiece of the book Episodes of insect life by Acheta Domestica (pseud., Miss L.M. Budgen], second series (Reeve, Benham and Reeve, London, 1850).

    Inscribed below: ‘L.M.B. del. Reeve, Benham & Reeve lith.’ Also below, two lines of verse from Lord Byron’s Siege of Corinth: ‘Remnants of things that have passed away/Fragments of stone reared by creatures of clay’.

    Accompanying text described these as: ‘A group of moths – agents and emblems of decay – holding their twilight or nocturnal revels amidst the ruins of a noble structure, of the transition period from early English…’

    Miss L.M. Budgen (fl.1850s) British illustrator and popular writer on floriculture and entomology.
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
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