Page 13 - St Giles Catesby booklet MC StG 20210723 e-flip_Neat

Spanish festoon butterfly

Mark Catesby is renowned for his portrayal of real "ecological" couplings
of plants and animals – a novel concept in the early eighteenth century.
Excellent examples include the pairing of the Carolina parakeet and the
bald cypress, the bird nesting in the trees and feeding on its seeds.
However, occasionally Catesby abandoned this practice and his
published plates show some incongruous combinations. The festoon
butterfly came from Cadiz in southwestern Spain; the manchineel tree
(Hippomane mancinella), above which the butterfly is shown hovering,
grows on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean in the Bahama Islands.
Naturally, never the twain do meet! He did not draw attention to this
geographical anomaly, simply describing the butterfly. The only clue he
gave is in the Latin phrase naming the festoon – "PAPILIO medius,
Gadetanus ...", which means "a middling size BUTTERFLY, from Cadiz ..."
(gaditanus [sic] = from Cadiz). Undoubtedly this indicates that he had
received specimens of the butterfly from his brother, John, who served in Mark Catesby, 1743. The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama islands,
volume 2, plate 95.
a British regiment at Gibraltar during the mid-1700s.
The festoon is not the only European animal depicted in The Manchineel tree (Hippomane mancinella) {upper centre} with smooth mistletoe
natural history of Carolina ... Another is the bizarre deep-water viper fish (Dendropemon purpureus) {lower half}
(Chauliodus sloani), drawn from a specimen that John sent and still and two festoon butterflies (Zerynthia ruminans)
preserved in the Natural History Museum, London.