Many ancient and mediaeval writers dealt with butterflies, but the first descriptions of American species are found in the works of Linnaeus, the great Swedish naturalist who wrote about 1750, and invented the system upon which all modern classification is based. Pictures of several American butterflies were published in 1759 by Charles Clerck, who had studied with Linnaeus. Johann Christian Fabricius, a professor at the University of Kiel, published a few more descriptions in 1796, and Peter Cramer, at about the same time, brought out four large volumes on the butterflies of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Most of these early books were written in Latin, and are now so rare and expensive t…
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