British Butterflies: Figures and Descriptions of Every Native Species

There was a time when knowing the name of a butterfly meant something, when a summer afternoon could be spent chasing a Painted Lady across a meadow and returning home with a treasure in a glass-topped box. W.S. Coleman's 1860 volume captures that vanished world of Victorian natural history, when the study of insects was neither hobby nor profession but a passionate calling undertaken by gentlemen and schoolboys alike. Here are every native species of British butterfly, rendered in illustrations drawn from living specimens and depicted at actual size, their wings still shimmering with the_colors the author believed them to possess. Coleman guides readers through the complete transformation: the microscopic egg, the voracious caterpillar, the mysterious chrysalis, and finally the emergence of something winged and ephemeral. But he does not shy from the darker aspects of the collector's art, acknowledging that not every chrysalis reaches its destined form. Part scientific catalog, part field guide, part love letter to the English countryside, this book preserves a moment when the pursuit of knowledge moved at the pace of a net swung through summer air.