Page:Jardine Naturalist's Library Exotic Moths.djvu/69

Rh text is so meagre, and an unworthy accompaniment of the plates which it professes to explain. For this, however, we are not to blame the writer, Caspar Commelin, whose Latinity is excellent; the lady, engrossed with her drawings, had failed to supply him with the requisite materials. As an entomological artist, very few have excelled Roesel, and at the time his work appeared (1746—1761) it was unequalled for the truth and beauty of its figures. These were chiefly devoted to the illustration of the other tribes, although not a few foreign moths are also represented, accompanied, in several instances, with figures of the caterpillar and chrysalis. The faithfulness and delicacy of these delineations must have exercised a very beneficial effect on the arts as applied to this subject, by affording a high standard wherewith subsequent artists might compare their productions. Roesel engraved the plates, as well as executed the drawings, with his own hand,—a combination of skill which seems almost indispensable to high excellence in this difficult department. A most valuable contribution to the history of exotic Lepidoptera appeared in 1770, when Drury published the first volume of his Illustrations of Natural History. A second appeared in 1773; the third and last in 1782. The whole work contains representations of a great number of crepuscular and nocturnal Lepidoptera, many of which were previously unknown, and a few continue to be unique even to the present day. Most of the figures are