Part 9
The Tufted-Neck Humming Bird described by Buffon under the name of _l’Oiseau-Mouche de Cayenne_, _Le Hupecol de Cayenne_, differs in no respect that we perceive from the bird before us; and for this reason we can have no hesitation in considering it as an individual of the same species. Our specimen is not from Cayenne, it was brought from New Zealand, and was one among the number of those rarieties collected in that island by the celebrated Navigator Captain Cook, in his first voyage round the world: that in which he was accompanied by Sir Joseph Banks, and Dr. Solander. The New Zealand specimen, though it nearly accords with the bird described by Buffon under the name of Hupecol de Cayenne, does not entirely agree with the description given of that species by Dr. Latham: it differs in wanting the white band on the rump, and the patch or space of the same colour on the lower region of the belly. Buffon speaks of such a characteristic mark of white on the rump, but not the abdomen of the Cayenne kind.[17] And it is not unlikely that these appearances may be indications only of a change in plumage, as the same circumstance is not unfrequently observed in many other birds at particular seasons, or in certain states of moulting. Dr. Latham himself observes that in the female these marks, instead of being white, incline to rufous, and this, no doubt, in the adult bird. There is certainly no appearance of white either upon the rump or region of the belly in the bird before us; and this example bears every appearance of having arrived at its full maturity of plumage. Perhaps the bird from Cayenne having a white band on the rump and abdomen, may be, however, if not a distinct variety, the more mature bird of the same species as that met with by our circumnavigators at New Zealand.
There are species of this tribe more brilliant in colour and more richly varied in the disposition of those colours, but assuredly none more singular or pleasing in general aspect than the bird before us. In point of size the Tufted Humming Bird is one of the smallest species of its family, scarcely exceeding in that respect the figure delineated in the plate, for its total length is not above three inches, and its bulk proportionate. The head and upper part of the body, and also the wings above, are green with a golden lustre; the tail greenish, changeable to testaceous golden brown, and having the inner webs rufous. The throat is of a fine green colour, variable in different lights to a golden hue with a yellow or a brown metallic lustre, and below that the whole of the belly is a rich brown glossed with green and golden. On the head of the male bird is a crest of pointed feathers of an orange or testaceous brown colour, and on each side of the neck a tuft composed of elongated feathers, differing in length, and having the tips of a dark but brilliant green. These feathers the little creature has the power of raising or depressing at pleasure: when these are displayed in full array on each side of the green patch on the front of the neck, and the crest stands erect, which is invariably the case when the bird is offended or surprised, the appearance of this bird is altogether remarkable. The female has neither the ruff on the neck nor the crest, and its colours are in general more obscure than in the male. The bill is of a moderate length and straight, the legs very short and the feet diminutive.[18]
In the annexed plate this elegant little bird is seen perched upon a tuft of the
JACQUINIA AURANTIA, THE AUSTRALASIAN ORANGE JACQUINIA,
in blossom; a plant that inhabits the New Holland and New Zealand, and which flowered in the month of July in the present year, at Kew.
Footnote 17:
“Le dessus du corps est d’un vert-sombre, qui jette quelques reflets dorés: les parties inférieures ne présentent que des couleurs rembrunies.” _Buffon_
Footnote 18:
A New Zealand specimen of this rare bird, lot 6286, sold for the sum of £2 10s. in the Leverian sale.
CONCHOLOGY.
PLATE XXVI.
TURBO SCALARIS WENTLETRAP.
ORDER UNIVALVE.
GENERIC CHARACTER.
Shell spiral, solid: aperture contracted, obicular, entire. * _Umbilicate, or Perforated._
SPECIFIC CHARACTER AND SYNONYMS.
Shell conic, pale fulvous with white ribs, whorls distant.
TURBO SCALARIS: testa conica, pallide fulva costis albis anfractibus distantibus.
TURBO SCALARIS: testa cancellata conica: anfractibus distantibus.—Linn. _Syst. Nat. 10 p. 764. n. 548._—_Mus. Lud. Ulr. 658. n. 351._—_Gmel. Linn. Syst. Nat. T. 1. p. 6. 3603. n. 62._
SCALARIA PRETIOSA: testâ conicâ, umbilicatâ inspiram laxam contortâ, pallidè fulva; costis albis; anfractibus disjunctis, lævibus: ultimo ventricoso.—_Lamarck Anim. sans. vertebr. 6. p. 2. 226. 1._
Wentletrap (scalaris).—_Rumpf. mus. t. 49. fig. A._—_Argenville Conch. pl. 11. fig. V._—_Gualt. tab. 10. fig. 2. 7._
* * * * *
The Wentletrap is one of those extraordinary productions of the shell tribe that has been regarded with unabated admiration among Conchologists from the days of Petiver and Rumpfius, the earliest of the more recent race of Naturalists, down to the period in which we live. And, although it does not at this time bear a price so very great as that which it bore some years ago, it is yet considered as a shell of no mean value when it is large and in fine perfection: even those of a smaller size, when in good condition, are esteemed of value, at least in some proportion to those more estimable for their perfection.
The rarity of this choice and very curious shell arises from various causes. In the Chinese seas, which it chiefly inhabits, the species is very rare; it sometimes occurs upon the coasts of Coromandel, but sparingly, and in the other seas upon the coasts of India it is believed to be still more uncommon. These shells are, moreover, so very brittle that they seldom occur perfect, and more especially the larger ones, which in almost every instance is abbreviated or imperfect at the point or apex. And, it may be also added that like _Voluta Pyrum_, the _Sacred Chank Shell_, of which an explanation was given in a former plate, the Wentletrap is one of the sacred shells of the worshippers of Brahma, and consequently when found in fine condition, is sure to obtain a considerable price among the opulent devotees of that doctrine, the prevailing worship of the many millions of inhabitants that people India, China, and other vast regions of the continent of Asia. In China, shells of this kind, of a moderate size, are valued at from four to five, or even ten dollars a piece, those are shells of about an inch and a quarter in length, and such as exceed that size are considered in proportion valuable. In England a fine specimen about the same size last mentioned would be estimated in worth at little less than five guineas. The celebrated Wentletrap of the Leverian Museum was about two inches long, but as it exhibited little freshness of colour, it produced only eleven pounds. Since that period another specimen, a trifle larger, and with the same bleached or depauperated appearance in its tints of colour, was sold at the public hammer for twenty seven pounds. This is the highest price we have seen paid for a specimen of this curious shell: we have heard of fifty guineas being given by one collector for a shell of this kind. Considerable as this price may be deemed, it appears to have been exceeded in one, if not more instances, upon the continent. Denys de Montfort, speaking, as it may be presumed, of the low countries and France, informs us, that he has seen it sell, when the height or length has exceeded two inches, at two thousand four hundred livres, or one hundred Louis. It will be observed that he is alluding to shells about the same size as that delineated in the annexed plate, the outline of which is from the Leverian specimen; the colouring amended from a smaller but more recent shell.
These shells are of such a tender nature, and their colours so evanescent or so feebly fixed, that they almost constantly present a mutilated and bleached appearance. This is not, however, uniformly the case; we have very recently had an opportunity of inspecting several specimens of a moderate size, that were brought from China, and from these we perceive that the Wentletrap, when in fine order, is of a pale testaceous or rather fulvous hue; and inclining sometimes to yellowish. In some few specimens the ground colour of the shell, instead of being uniform, appears sprinkled with pallid spots and dots of a rounded form. Sometimes we are assured the colour inclines to rufous, or a reddish tint. Lamarck has this shell of a pale fulvous colour, with the ribs as usual, white, for he adopts this as part of the leading character of the species; his expression is “_pallide fulva_; _costis albis_.”
The animal inhabitant of this shell has the head armed with two feelers, each ending in a setaceous thread or hair: the eye is placed upon the tentacula at the base of this thread or hair, and it has also a kind of trunk at the mouth, by means of which it searches for its food amongst the sand and weeds. It is supposed to be of a carnivorous nature, subsisting on other marine worms. It is considered rather as a littoral species, frequenting the little sandy bays and creeks among the breakers upon the lower parts of the sea shore, and is to be sought for with the most probability of success among the sea weeds or fuci that grow in the pools of water lying in these sunken rocks, because in such situations it is most likely to find protection against the intrusion of the boisterous element. Occasionally it is seen, though rarely, crawling on the sands at low water.
In a natural classification of the shell tribe, should we ever arrive at an arrangement of Conchology, so perfect as to deserve that epithet, it would be a task of some difficulty to fix the precise station of the Wentletrap; for in the order of nature it presents anomalies which cannot easily be reconciled, and few authors are agreed upon this subject even in the artificial arrangements which they have been induced to adopt. Thus Rumpfius makes it a _Buccinum_, Davila a _Tuyau_, Argenville places it as a _Terebra_ (vis) and De Montfort Scalarus. In the Encyclopædia it is denominated Scalaria Pretiosa, and this name Lamarck retains.
The name of Wentletrap, by which this shell is now so well known, is derived from the Dutch Language, and signifies according to the technical phraseology of the Dutch architects in building, a winding stair case, or flight of stairs turning spirally round a central column, into which one end of every step is mortised as they ascend from the base upwards. The term Wentletrap, Wenteltrap, or as the Dutch sometimes call it, Wendeltrap,[19] is the name given by Rumpfius the Hollander to this shell, as a synonymous name with his latin term _Scalare_. It is an allusion, somewhat fanciful we must allow, to the disposition of the costal ridges upon this shell, and which when viewed laterally as they traverse or pass over the upper convexity of the whorls on each side, have the appearance of a flight of steps turning spirally round the body of the shell, just as a winding staircase would be carried spirally round a cone or sub-cylindrical body. The singularity of this species (for it is not a peculiarity or character even of the new genus Scalaria as established by Lamarck and Cuvier) consists in having the whole whorl of the shell, from the mouth to the summit, entirely unconnected, while in spiral shells the suture of the whorls is united throughout. The tube is perfectly detached from the mouth to the apex, and the whorls linked together only by means of the longitudinal ribs which traverse the tube at regular intervals, so that the only connexion of the whorls is at the junction of those ribs, which touching each other unite at that part which in regular spiral shells that have the whorls united, would be denominated the suture of the whorls.
Considering the very zealous propensity of some French Naturalists of the present day, and of their admirers in England, to create new genera upon every slight occasion, it becomes a matter of some astonishment that a character so very obvious as the disjunction of the tube from the aperture to the very summit should not have laid the foundation of a new genus, for the reception of this shell. Lamarck, however, places it at the head of his _Scalaires_, and one of the next species in succession is his _Scalaria Communis_, a shell perfectly well known by every Naturalist throughout Europe for nearly a century past under the name of _Turbo Clathratus_.[20] Nor is Lamarck singular in this very anomalous consolidation of shells so distant in this respect from each other; for Cuvier in his _Règne Animal_, after describing our present shell, the Linnæan Turbo Scalaris, as one of his _Scalaires_, and informing us it is distinguished by the whorls not touching each other, adds particularly that there is another species which has not that peculiarity, and that is the _Turbo Clathratus_. Nothing, however, can be more certain than that from this very circumstance these two shells are generically distinct from each other; Clathratus may be retained with the Linnæan Turbines, but Scalaris has nearly, if not entirely as much claim to the _Serpula_[21] as _Turbo_ genus; which cannot be said of T. Clathratus. We shall for this reason allow the Wentletrap to remain where Linnæus has placed it, namely, among the Turbines; not perhaps without some hesitation, but if we did remove it, we should certainly prefer the institution of new genus for its reception, instead of wandering from one anomaly to another, as we must perceive would be the case in the present instance by following the example of Lamarck and Cuvier.
It may be lastly observed that the progressive growth of this extraordinary rarity may be determined by the greater number of the longitudinal ribs that pass over and surround the tube of the whorls, for at each increase the animal forms a new mouth to its shell: the new mouth as it is protruded and formed, appears like the former ones, entirely surrounded by a rim or ring, and it is these rings of the mouths as they are formed in succession, that constitute the ribs which appear to traverse the shell as it is increased in length, and consequently in the number of its rings. Shells of a large size exhibit sometimes as many as fifty or sixty of such rings surrounding the tube or spire at regular intervals.
Footnote 19:
_Wenteltrap_, _Wendeltrap_, Rondom gaande trap, met een spil daar al de trappen in schroeven. _Marin._
Footnote 20:
_Vide_ Donovan’s British Shells, Vol. I. plate 28.
Footnote 21:
_Serpula_ Linn. _Vermicularus De Montf. Vermet_ Adanson. The animal of the Serpulæ, it may be added further, does not differ, according to Cuvier, from those of the Linnæan Genus Turbo, and consequently not from Scalaria of Lamarck and Cuvier, as must be concluded from their admission of Turbo Clathratus among the number of its species, in an arrangement founded on the organization of the animal, as well as its testaceous habitation. Cuvier himself observes that the animal of the Vermet, and also the opening (of the shell) resemble those of the Turbo, but that the whorls do not touch, and are in part irregularly curved like the tubes of the Serpulas.—_Règne Animal T. 2. 419._ And his classification further shews the analogy of these tribes of shells, since the animal of the Linnæan _Turbo_, the _Vermets_ of Adanson, and _Scalaria_ of Lamarck, are all of the same family, the _Gastéropodas Pectinibranches_ of Cuvier.
ENTOMOLOGY.
PLATE XXVII.
FIGURE I.
PAPILIO ZACYNTHUS ZACYNTHUS’S BUTTERFLY.
ORDER LEPIDOPTERA.
GENERIC CHARACTER.
Antennæ thicker towards the tip, and generally terminating in a knob: wings erect when at rest. Fly by day.
* EQUITES TROJANI.—_Fabr._
SPECIFIC CHARACTER AND SYNONYMS.
Wings indented, black: a spot on the anterior pair green and white: and one on the posterior wings palmated and sanguineous.
PAPILIO ZACYNTHUS: alis dentatis nigris: anticis macula viridi alba, posticis palmata sanguinea.—_Fabr. Ent. Syst. T. 3. p. 1. p. 15. n. 46._
PAPILIO ZACYNTHUS.—_Jon. fig. pict. 1 tab. 22._
* * * * *
It cannot fail to prove satisfactory to the Naturalist to be informed that we have the same sanction for presenting the annexed figure as that of the true PAPILIO ZACYNTHUS of _Fabricius_, as that to which we have several times adverted upon other similar occasions in the progress of the present publication, namely the hand-writing of that celebrated Entomologist, inscribed upon the original drawings of Mr. Jones. This is indeed a circumstance to which we cannot advert too frequently in our references, since it is upon that authority alone that we are now enabled to determine with any degree of precision nearly the whole of those new species of Papiliones, the existence of which has been made known throughout Europe by the classic writings of that author, but of which no other evidence is now extant; for most of the collections existing at the time Fabricius was in England, and to which he refers, have been long since dispersed, and but for the care of the late Mr. Jones of Chelsea, who had preserved these invaluable authorities to the scientific world, the labours even of Fabricius in this department had become comparatively of very little value.
Papilio Zacynthus is a species of the first family of Papiliones, the Equites Trojani. It has much the habit of Papilio Æneas, a well known insect, described by Linnæus, and which is figured by Roesel, Seba, Jablonsky, and some other authors; but upon an attentive comparison it will be found to be very different. Its great similarity renders it of more importance to point out precisely the difference that prevails between them, and this the present figure it is presumed will render distinctly obvious.
In the species P. Zacanthus the wings are black: in the middle of the first pair is a large spot composed of two distinct colours, the anterior part being white, the posterior green, but on the underside the spot appears entirely white. Papilio Æneas has also a spot of green upon the anterior wings but without any portion of white. Papilio Æneas is a native of India, Papilio Zacynthus is from the Brasils.
FIGURE II.
PAPILIO DIMAS DIMAS’S BUTTERFLY.
ORDER LEPIDOPTERA.
GENERIC CHARACTER.
Antennæ thicker towards the tip, and generally terminating in a knob: wings erect when at rest. Fly by day.
* EQUITES TROJANI.—_Fabr._
SPECIFIC CHARACTER AND SYNONYMS.
Wings indented: above and beneath black: on the anterior pair, a white spot divided by veins: on the posterior pair a palmate sanguineous spot.
PAPILIO DIMAS: alis dentatis concoloribus nigris anticis macula alba venis divisa, posticis sanguinea palmata.—_Fabr. Ent. Syst. T. 3. p. 1. p. 16. n. 47._
PAPILIO DIMAS—_Jon. fig. pict. 1. tab. 23._
* * * * *
This, like the preceding, is a species we have been enabled to determine from the Fabrician MS. and the drawings of Mr. Jones. Fabricius, it appears, was not entirely decided in his mind whether the two Papiliones figured by Cramer, plate 29 fig. E, under the name of Hyppason, and that in the same plate, fig. F, named Euristeus, ought in reality to be considered as appertaining to this species; and preferring the name of Dimas which had been previously given to it by Mr. Jones, he has described it under that name, allowing the references to Cramer, above quoted, to remain as synonyms. The Naturalist may rely with implicit confidence upon its being the Papilio Dimas of Jones and Fabricius.
This is rather larger than the former, the general colour black: on the anterior wings, in the middle, is a large white spot, so situated upon the junction of the ribs that they pass distinctly through it and give the appearance of a spot cleft at the sutures. The sanguineous palmate spot on the posterior wings is six cleft: and besides this there is a small spot of red upon the scollops, between the dentations at the margin of the posterior wings. The colours and spots appear beneath as above, but only paler.
Papilio Dimas is a native of Brazil, and bears a near affinity to Papilio Anchises.
CONCHOLOGY.
PLATE XXVIII.
MALLEUS MACULATUS SPOTTED HAMMER SHELL, OR HOUND’S TONGUE.
* BIVALVE.
GENERIC CHARACTER.
Shell subquivalve, rough, deformed, generally lengthened and lobed or hammer-shaped: beaks small and divergent. Hinge without teeth, a lengthened conic hollow situated under the beaks and traversing obliquely the facet of the ligament. A lateral slope or groove at the side of the ligament for the passage of the byssus or beard with which the animal is furnished.
SPECIFIC CHARACTER.
Shell curved, with a single somewhat straight abbreviated lobe at the base: reddish yellow, clouded, spotted and dotted with fuscous.
MALLEUS MACULATUS: testa arcuata, lobo basis unico sub-recta abbreviato flavo-rufescente fusco nebulosa maculata punctisque.
* * * * *
The singular object now before us, a shell no less remarkable for the peculiarity of its form than rarity of occurrence, is one of the most choice productions of the seas surrounding the Friendly Isles. The discovery of this shell, like that of many others, resulted from the assiduities of that eminent Naturalist and promoter of scientific knowledge, the late Sir Joseph Banks, and of Dr. Solander, who accompanied him in that memorable voyage of Captain Cook to the Southern Hemisphere, in which the Friendly Isles were discovered. The fine example of this shell, in particular, from which the drawing in our plate is taken, it may be also added, was one of those which were brought to this country by Captain Cook upon the return of the expedition, and which being shortly after presented to Sir Ashton Lever, remained in the Museum of that distinguished amateur from that period to the time of its dissolution in the year 1806.