'A fine transparent varnish'. Smaragdesthes africana, Emerald African Flower Chafer, ARTIS Amsterdam Zoo, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
At the beginning of the second volume of his Illustrations of Natural History (1773), Dru Drury (1725-1804) writes enthusiastically: 'To gratify a laudable curiosity, and lead the mind to the exercise of one of its noblest faculties, was the motive that first encouraged me to publish a work of this kind'. He was certainly successful; the first volume of his work had been so well-received by the public that there was enough money to publish the following one.
It's in this second book that Drury gives a full description of this African Chafer (though he doesn't in the text name it. You've got to look at the beautiful plates (in this case XXX, fig. 4) and work back via a listing of those plates with names (ours is African Scarab) to the descriptions.
Of our beasties Drury says: 'The [green] colour, which is very brilliant, appears not to be reflected from the surface, but seems as if covered with a fine transparent varnish, like the pannels of our chariots and coaches'. And at the end of his description, Dury notes: 'I' - see the inset for his portrait - 'received it from Sierra Leon in Africa. I have not met with it in any author'.
'A fine transparent varnish'. Smaragdesthes africana, Emerald African Flower Chafer, ARTIS Amsterdam Zoo, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
At the beginning of the second volume of his Illustrations of Natural History (1773), Dru Drury (1725-1804) writes enthusiastically: 'To gratify a laudable curiosity, and lead the mind to the exercise of one of its noblest faculties, was the motive that first encouraged me to publish a work of this kind'. He was certainly successful; the first volume of his work had been so well-received by the public that there was enough money to publish the following one.
It's in this second book that Drury gives a full description of this African Chafer (though he doesn't in the text name it. You've got to look at the beautiful plates (in this case XXX, fig. 4) and work back via a listing of those plates with names (ours is African Scarab) to the descriptions.
Of our beasties Drury says: 'The [green] colour, which is very brilliant, appears not to be reflected from the surface, but seems as if covered with a fine transparent varnish, like the pannels of our chariots and coaches'. And at the end of his description, Dury notes: 'I' - see the inset for his portrait - 'received it from Sierra Leon in Africa. I have not met with it in any author'.