Image of Papilio homerus made by Henry Seymer in 1768. Seymer’s legend (on a separate sheet) indicates Jamaica as its origin, noting “Not in Linn[aeus] very rare.” This exquisite painting also depicts two Jamaican hawkmoths: Cocytius antaeus (Drury, 1773 = jatrophae Fabricius, 1775), and the smaller Xylophanes tersa (Drury, 1770). The small moth at the top is also noted as coming from Jamaica, but the arctiid (lower right: Utetheisa sp.) is recorded as from “New York”. The plants are identified by Seymer as granadillas (Passifloraceae). 

Contexts in source publication

Context 1

... so, then Jones' image is certainly not the oldest painting of this wonderful insect. Here we report two older and very beautiful images made by Henry Seymer (Figs 2, 3), indicating that Homer's Swallowtail was first collected before 1769. Thus if we are to discover which explorer first found Homer's Swallowtail in nature and brought specimens to England, we should focus on the period 1734-1768. ...

Context 2

... first of the two Seymer images of Homer's Swallowtail was made by Henry senior and is dated 1768 (Fig. 2). It shows the butterfly in dorsal view with the wings outstretched. Although necessarily made from a dead, "set" specimen, it is very reminiscent of the insect in life, as shown in photographs published by Emmel & Garraway (1990), New & Collins (1991) and Bailey (2003). The quality of Seymer's image is outstanding, arguably the equal ...

Context 3

... figure that appears in Riley (1975). In several ways it is superior to Jones' paintings ( Fig. 1) and even the Hewitson figure, most notably in the far better shape of the main, asymmetrical hindwing 'tail'. Seymer's homerus dominates his beautifully arranged plate, which also features four moths and intertwined cuttings of three flowering plants (Fig. ...

Context 4

... is it possible that the Seymer's homerus specimens came not from Drury, but via the Duchess of Portland? And maybe Drury received the homerus (and perhaps other Jamaican insects painted by Jones) from Seymer, or directly from the Duchess herself? The 72 Seymer paintings are replete with images of Jamaican insects, such as the two hawkmoths in Fig. 2, both species being named by Dru Drury shortly after this plate was ...

Context 5

... so-called “Maroons”, relatively safe in the mountains, organised raiding parties to plunder the English settlers on the lands below. Controlled from their headquarters at Nanny Town in the Blue Mountains, and Accompong in the Cockpit Country, the raids continued for many years, despite serious attempts by the British to stop them (Brown & Heineman, 1972). In 1734 the colonists finally succeeded in subduing Nanny Town and after that, or perhaps from about 1740 when a peace treaty was signed, the British were able to explore the mountainous hinterland (Bailey, 2003). Thus the original material of Papilio homerus was probably collected by English explorers and brought to Britain sometime after 1734. Jones’ painting was made from a specimen in the Dru Drury Collection (see below), and was just one of a large number of images making up the famous but unpublished Jones’ Icones (now in the University Museum Oxford: Waterhouse, 1938). All six of Jones’ volumes were studied by Fabricius during 1787 (Gaonkar & Vane-Wright, submitted). According to Salmon (2000), and records held in Oxford, Jones completed his entire Icones during 1783–85. If so, then Jones’ image is certainly not the oldest painting of this wonderful insect. Here we report two older and very beautiful images made by Henry Seymer (Figs 2, 3), indicating that Homer’s Swallowtail was first collected before 1769. Thus if we are to discover which explorer first found Homer’s Swallowtail in nature and brought specimens to England, we should focus on the period 1734–1768. The entomological activities of Henry Seymer and his son Henry Junior, who lived at Hanford in Dorset, have been given only limited recognition. So far as we are aware they never published any of their work, but it is evident that Henry senior, in particular, was a fine and dedicated naturalist with a wide range of interests, notably in botany, mineralogy, palaeontology, malacology and entomology (Richard Pulteney correspondence; Lambert, 1811; Perceval, 1983; Dance, 1983; Gage & Stearn, 1988). What little has been published about them mainly concerns their pioneering efforts on the British Lepidoptera, as revealed by Perceval (1983, 1995) and Salmon (2000). A portrait of Henry Seymer senior hangs in the Linnean Society rooms at Burlington House; unsigned, it is attributed to Thomas Beach 1738–1806, who studied under Reynolds. For many years this well-known painting erroneously and confusingly carried the dates of Henry Junior, and this is repeated in Gage & Stern (1988: 193) and Salmon (2000); this has now been corrected. Less well known is the active pursuit, by both father and son, of exotic natural history, including conchology (Dance, 1983) and lepidopterology. Evidently Henry senior employed agents in London “to secure any collections that might be brought to this country by voyagers ... [and] he maintained a very extensive correspondence with the naturalists of his time ... [including] Drury” (Lambert, 1811). The Natural History Museum has copies of a few letters from Dru Drury to Seymer covering the period 1770–1775, and from these it is evident that Seymer “exchanged and purchased exotic specimens through Drury” (Perceval, 1983). Perceval (loc. cit.) continues: “In a sale of part of the library of Sir Humphrey de Trafford in December 1905, a book of 70 drawings of exotic butterflies with manuscript descriptions by Seymer made £30, a considerable sum at that time (report in the Field on 16 th December 1905). I wonder where the book is now.” In 1992 one of us (HWDH) purchased a set of 72 paintings of exotic butterflies and moths set against floral backgrounds. The 72 sheets, all of uniform size ( ca 340 x 275 mm), were in a decrepit Victorian leather binding inscribed Butterflies and Plants, by Henry Seymer, and Henry Seymer, Jun r . With a few exceptions all are signed “HS” and/ or “HS jun ”, in a way consistent with the signatures noted by Perceval (1983). There is no doubt that these are all genuine paintings by the father and son team. Each sheet has a year date, indicating that Henry senior worked on the set from 1755 up to 1783, a couple of years before his death in 1785, with his son joining in from 1772 onwards. Whether or not these are one and the same as the “70 drawings” ex libris Sir Humphrey de Trafford noted above or another, previously unknown set is not yet clear. Given that the Hughes set was obtained indirectly from a member of the Seymer family, this rather suggests that the set of 72 referred to here is not the set of 70 noted by Perceval, and that we are thus unable to answer Perceval’s particular question as to its whereabouts. However, this newly discovered or re-discovered set of Seymer paintings is of great interest to the student of tropical lepidopterology, and is the subject of ongoing research by the present authors (Vane-Wright & Hughes, in prep.). The first of the two Seymer images of Homer’s Swallowtail was made by Henry senior and is dated 1768 (Fig. 2). It shows the butterfly in dorsal view with the wings outstretched. Although necessarily made from a dead, “set” specimen, it is very reminiscent of the insect in life, as shown in photographs published by Emmel & Garraway (1990), New & Collins (1991) and Bailey (2003). The quality of Seymer’s image is outstanding, arguably the equal of Hewitson’s best work (in Doubleday, 1848: pl. 4: Fig. 4) and the fine contemporary illustration by Richard Lewington in Smith et al. (1994), better than the excellent watercolour of a set specimen by Marjorie Favreau that graces Brown & Heineman (1972), far more accurate than the late Victorian image by Edith Blake illustrated in Gilbert (2000), and incomparably superior to the pallid figure that appears in Riley (1975). In several ways it is superior to Jones’ paintings (Fig. 1) and even the Hewitson figure, most notably in the far better shape of the main, asymmetrical hindwing ‘tail’. Seymer’s homerus dominates his beautifully arranged plate, which also features four moths and intertwined cuttings of three flowering plants (Fig. 2). The 1773 plate (Fig. 3) is, we presume, one of a number of joint father and son efforts, with Henry junior given credit for the plant and the Acraea (top right), the legend stating “Plant & N o 2. H.S Jun r ”. By analogy with numerous other joint efforts in the set, Henry senior must be credited with responsibility for the Historis, Pachliopta and Papilio homerus , but in this case the remainder of the legend simply states “Rest Capt. Davies 1773.” From the style and execution, we are sure Henry senior did paint these three butterflies; we return to the matter of Captain Davies below. In this case the homerus is shown in what Seymer refers to elsewhere as “profile”, with the wings folded but with a little of the anterior margin of the forewing upperside just visible. Although the artist could never have seen the butterfly in life, “in the evening and during occasional rains the insect sits with compact, folded wings” (Avinoff, quoted in Brown & Heineman, 1972: 336). This superb painting shows the lovely underside pattern with great subtlety. Like so many of the new species introduced in the 1793 Ent. Syst ., and as already recounted, Fabricius’ description of Papilio homerus is based entirely on an illustration in the unpublished Jones’ Icones . This was based, in turn, or so it would appear at first sight, on one or more specimens in the Latham Collection (Fabricius, 1793: 181, who notes “Dom. Latham”). The name “Latham” appears on the Jones figure (Fig. 1), and was presumably accepted without question by Fabricius. This, however, was a mistake. Like many of the Jones illustrations, his image was prepared from a specimen in Dru Drury’s collection, as clearly established by Donovan (1834). If so, the original specimen on which Jones’ figure is based, if it survives, is most likely in the Macleay Collection, in Sydney. Donovan gives an account of how Drury’s single specimen of homerus was sold as Lot 305 on Saturday May 25 th , 1805, to John Francillon, for “four pounds sterling”, and was subsequently sold on again, after Francillon’s death in 1817, to “Alexander Mc’Leay, Esq. [F].L.S.” MacLeay emigrated to Australia in 1825, taking his vast entomological collection with him (Gage & Stearn, 1988). The Drury specimen should be searched for in Sydney, as it is the only candidate for an authentic name-bearing type for the nominal species Papilio homerus. Was one of Dru Drury’s collectors the source? Whatever the truth regarding the source of the specimen used by Jones, we can make the reasonable assumption that, at that still early date, not many butterfly collectors would have reached Nanny Town and worked in the Blue Mountains beyond. So it would be quite possible that the Seymers obtained their specimen or specimens, perhaps via Drury, from the same original source. Henry Seymer made his first image of this species in 1768, when Jones would have been just 18 years of age. Salmon (2000) indicates that Jones’ Icones , all 1500 of them, were painted in the three-year period 1783–1785. If so, then Jones’ work was done when the efforts of the Seymers had come to an end, but before their collection was sold in 1786 (Perceval, 1983). We can conclude that it is plausible that Seymer obtained his material from Drury, who mostly retained only “short series” in his collection (Salmon, 2000: 114). Under this scenario, the Seymer and Jones images could have been painted from material that ultimately came from the same source, but probably not the same specimen. However, further twists to this tale suggest the possibility of a different conclusion. Captain Davies. Very few of the 72 plates mention anything other than the year when painted, which of the two Seymers made the particular images, and the Latin names of the species (often added later, on accompanying sheets). Two plates by Henry junior from 1773 have the word “Oxford” added, ...

Context 6

... or so it would appear at first sight, on one or more specimens in the Latham Collection (Fabricius, 1793: 181, who notes “Dom. Latham”). The name “Latham” appears on the Jones figure (Fig. 1), and was presumably accepted without question by Fabricius. This, however, was a mistake. Like many of the Jones illustrations, his image was prepared from a specimen in Dru Drury’s collection, as clearly established by Donovan (1834). If so, the original specimen on which Jones’ figure is based, if it survives, is most likely in the Macleay Collection, in Sydney. Donovan gives an account of how Drury’s single specimen of homerus was sold as Lot 305 on Saturday May 25 th , 1805, to John Francillon, for “four pounds sterling”, and was subsequently sold on again, after Francillon’s death in 1817, to “Alexander Mc’Leay, Esq. [F].L.S.” MacLeay emigrated to Australia in 1825, taking his vast entomological collection with him (Gage & Stearn, 1988). The Drury specimen should be searched for in Sydney, as it is the only candidate for an authentic name-bearing type for the nominal species Papilio homerus. Was one of Dru Drury’s collectors the source? Whatever the truth regarding the source of the specimen used by Jones, we can make the reasonable assumption that, at that still early date, not many butterfly collectors would have reached Nanny Town and worked in the Blue Mountains beyond. So it would be quite possible that the Seymers obtained their specimen or specimens, perhaps via Drury, from the same original source. Henry Seymer made his first image of this species in 1768, when Jones would have been just 18 years of age. Salmon (2000) indicates that Jones’ Icones , all 1500 of them, were painted in the three-year period 1783–1785. If so, then Jones’ work was done when the efforts of the Seymers had come to an end, but before their collection was sold in 1786 (Perceval, 1983). We can conclude that it is plausible that Seymer obtained his material from Drury, who mostly retained only “short series” in his collection (Salmon, 2000: 114). Under this scenario, the Seymer and Jones images could have been painted from material that ultimately came from the same source, but probably not the same specimen. However, further twists to this tale suggest the possibility of a different conclusion. Captain Davies. Very few of the 72 plates mention anything other than the year when painted, which of the two Seymers made the particular images, and the Latin names of the species (often added later, on accompanying sheets). Two plates by Henry junior from 1773 have the word “Oxford” added, suggesting they might have been painted or based on material from there, and another bears the name of Henry Smeathman, a leading contemporary naturalist and collector who supplied Drury, among others, with material (Gilbert, 2000). One of the very few other plates to bear any such additional information is the 1773 “ homerus plate” that, as already noted above, somewhat mysteriously bears the name “Capt. Davies” where we might have expected to have seen “H.S.” (Henry Seymer senior). Could the homerus specimens have been brought from Jamaica by Davies? Captain Davies lived in Shooter’s Hill, Kent, and was known to both Drury and Seymer (letter from Drury to Henry Seymour [sic], circa August 1772, Drury letters folio [257]; see also folios [204], [208]: Sherborn, 1937). From the Society’s Pulteney records, it seems that Davies visited Hanford House in 1772 and again in 1775 (Seymer letters 83, 111, in Pulteney correspondence). So far, however, we have not found evidence of a direct connection between Davies and Jamaica. Moreover, if 1772 were the first connection between Davies and Seymer, it is too late for him to have been the source of the Papilio homerus depicted in the 1768 painting. The Duchess of Portland. A second twist concerns Margaret Bentinck (née Cavendish- Harley, 1715–1785), the celebrated Duchess of Portland, outstanding collector and bibliophile, and mother of a future Prime Minister of Great Britain (the third Duke of Portland, PM briefly in 1783, and again in 1807–09). As noted by Lambert (1811), “the ... Duchess of Portland frequently presented him [Henry Seymer] with rare specimens ... from her noble cabinet”, and he states that she visited Seymer at Hanford frequently from about 1773 onwards, almost up to the time of her death (they both died in 1785). The second Duke of Portland, William Bentinck (born about 1708, died 1762), was Margaret’s husband. His father, Henry Bentinck, first Duke of Portland, was Governor of Jamaica from 1722, dying there on 4 th July 1726. Given this link to Jamaica, is it possible that the Seymer’s homerus specimens came not from Drury, but via the Duchess of Portland? And maybe Drury received the homerus (and perhaps other Jamaican insects painted by Jones) from Seymer, or directly from the Duchess herself? The 72 Seymer paintings are replete with images of Jamaican insects, such as the two hawkmoths in Fig. 2, both species being named by Dru Drury shortly after this plate was completed. Many of the classic localities for homerus lie in Portland Parish (Brown & Heineman, 1972; Riley, 1975), reflecting this connection. The Portland area of Jamaica was so named in 1723, after the first Duke. To add a further twist, after her death in 1785, the Duchess’ Lepidoptera collection was purchased by Drury (Salmon, 2000). If Jones’ illustrations of homerus were painted as late as 1785, could they have been made that year from Drury’s latest accession, the late Duchess’ collection? Under this scenario, it is just possible that the two Seymer images and the Jones paintings were all made from the same specimen. Edward Donovan was a confidant of Drury and worked on his collection, but his rather speculative account of how Drury acquired the swallowtail, written many years later, sheds no clear light on this question (Donovan, 1834). However, while the Portland connection is attractive, it is clear from the Pulteney correspondence (Seymer letter 80) that Seymer did not actually meet the Duchess in person until July 1772. Subsequent letters show that Seymer and the Duchess did exchange specimens, but Seymer remarks several times on the poor quality of her presents to him, while on at least one occasion she was apparently thrilled with some of the insects that he sent to her (“she was in raptures with ... two or three new flys I lately sent her”: Seymer to Pulteney, letter 87, dated Dec. 26 1772). This all seems to suggest that it is unlikely that the Duchess would have been the source of Seymer’s homerus specimen, and certainly not at such an early date as 1768. If we eliminate the Duchess on these grounds, what of Drury? If Drury had received such a swallowtail by 1768, or even 1773, surely he would have asked Moses Harris to paint this magnificent insect for one of the three volumes of his Illustrations of Natural History (Drury, 1770–1782). Thus we return to Seymer’s own connections as the possible source – including the possibility that he supplied one of these huge butterflies to the Duchess, and by this route the species eventually became known to Drury and Jones. Ellis and Robins. Did Seymer have any direct links to Jamaica? Lambert’s (1811) brief memoir again gives assistance. It seems that “John Ellis Esqr. a gentleman of large property in Jamaica and a particular friend of Mr Seymers at his recommendation undertook to make as compleat [sic] a collection of drawings of the natural history of that country as could be procured” (Lambert, op. cit.). He was to do this with the assistance of a natural history illustrator from Bath named Robins, a man proposed to Ellis by Seymer. According to Lambert’s notes, Ellis and Robins spent 10 years in Jamaica amassing thousands of illustrations of wildlife, which they intended to present to the British Museum. Just before Ellis set out to return to Europe, Robins was drowned. Ellis and the huge collection of drawings were also doomed: the British Queen on which he embarked was lost in a terrible storm, the same storm that was “fatal to the Ville de Paris and so many other vessels” (Lambert, 1811: 6). Some drawings were sent back to England over the years, and survived according to Lambert in the collection of Ellis’ son, John Ellis junior, who lived in London at (where else other than!) Portland Place. Could the luckless Ellis, his “particular friend”, have been the source of the many Jamaican insects in Seymer’s collection? Or could it have been the equally unfortunate Robins? In the Pulteney correspondence there is clear evidence that Robins sent natural history specimens to Seymer from Jamaica (e.g. Seymer letter 86, dated 14 th December 1772). Oddly enough, the same letter also notes that Captain Davies had “been so good to send some curious flys [sic]”. To establish whether or not Robins could have been the source of the homerus specimen painted by Seymer in 1768, it is necessary to establish when he went with Ellis to Jamaica. If we take the 10 years noted by Lambert literally, and that this period ended with Ellis’ death at sea, then the date of the loss of the Ville de Paris would provide the critical information. A captured French warship named Ville de Paris foundered off Newfoundland in September 1782, along with several other vessels of the British Navy, with the loss of some 3500 lives. If this is the event to which Lambert refers, then it would seem that Ellis and Robins must have started their project around 1772, too late for Robins to have been the source of the “1768” homerus. As noted above, by the end of 1772 Robins was sending material to Seymer, but this could have been his first consignment. But if we presume that Ellis, “a gentleman of large property in Jamaica”, was himself only returning to Jamaica in 1772, it remains a possibility that he was Seymer’s earlier source of so many rare and wonderful Jamaican insects. Perhaps it was such earlier ...

Context 7

... held in Oxford, Jones completed his entire Icones during 1783–85. If so, then Jones’ image is certainly not the oldest painting of this wonderful insect. Here we report two older and very beautiful images made by Henry Seymer (Figs 2, 3), indicating that Homer’s Swallowtail was first collected before 1769. Thus if we are to discover which explorer first found Homer’s Swallowtail in nature and brought specimens to England, we should focus on the period 1734–1768. The entomological activities of Henry Seymer and his son Henry Junior, who lived at Hanford in Dorset, have been given only limited recognition. So far as we are aware they never published any of their work, but it is evident that Henry senior, in particular, was a fine and dedicated naturalist with a wide range of interests, notably in botany, mineralogy, palaeontology, malacology and entomology (Richard Pulteney correspondence; Lambert, 1811; Perceval, 1983; Dance, 1983; Gage & Stearn, 1988). What little has been published about them mainly concerns their pioneering efforts on the British Lepidoptera, as revealed by Perceval (1983, 1995) and Salmon (2000). A portrait of Henry Seymer senior hangs in the Linnean Society rooms at Burlington House; unsigned, it is attributed to Thomas Beach 1738–1806, who studied under Reynolds. For many years this well-known painting erroneously and confusingly carried the dates of Henry Junior, and this is repeated in Gage & Stern (1988: 193) and Salmon (2000); this has now been corrected. Less well known is the active pursuit, by both father and son, of exotic natural history, including conchology (Dance, 1983) and lepidopterology. Evidently Henry senior employed agents in London “to secure any collections that might be brought to this country by voyagers ... [and] he maintained a very extensive correspondence with the naturalists of his time ... [including] Drury” (Lambert, 1811). The Natural History Museum has copies of a few letters from Dru Drury to Seymer covering the period 1770–1775, and from these it is evident that Seymer “exchanged and purchased exotic specimens through Drury” (Perceval, 1983). Perceval (loc. cit.) continues: “In a sale of part of the library of Sir Humphrey de Trafford in December 1905, a book of 70 drawings of exotic butterflies with manuscript descriptions by Seymer made £30, a considerable sum at that time (report in the Field on 16 th December 1905). I wonder where the book is now.” In 1992 one of us (HWDH) purchased a set of 72 paintings of exotic butterflies and moths set against floral backgrounds. The 72 sheets, all of uniform size ( ca 340 x 275 mm), were in a decrepit Victorian leather binding inscribed Butterflies and Plants, by Henry Seymer, and Henry Seymer, Jun r . With a few exceptions all are signed “HS” and/ or “HS jun ”, in a way consistent with the signatures noted by Perceval (1983). There is no doubt that these are all genuine paintings by the father and son team. Each sheet has a year date, indicating that Henry senior worked on the set from 1755 up to 1783, a couple of years before his death in 1785, with his son joining in from 1772 onwards. Whether or not these are one and the same as the “70 drawings” ex libris Sir Humphrey de Trafford noted above or another, previously unknown set is not yet clear. Given that the Hughes set was obtained indirectly from a member of the Seymer family, this rather suggests that the set of 72 referred to here is not the set of 70 noted by Perceval, and that we are thus unable to answer Perceval’s particular question as to its whereabouts. However, this newly discovered or re-discovered set of Seymer paintings is of great interest to the student of tropical lepidopterology, and is the subject of ongoing research by the present authors (Vane-Wright & Hughes, in prep.). The first of the two Seymer images of Homer’s Swallowtail was made by Henry senior and is dated 1768 (Fig. 2). It shows the butterfly in dorsal view with the wings outstretched. Although necessarily made from a dead, “set” specimen, it is very reminiscent of the insect in life, as shown in photographs published by Emmel & Garraway (1990), New & Collins (1991) and Bailey (2003). The quality of Seymer’s image is outstanding, arguably the equal of Hewitson’s best work (in Doubleday, 1848: pl. 4: Fig. 4) and the fine contemporary illustration by Richard Lewington in Smith et al. (1994), better than the excellent watercolour of a set specimen by Marjorie Favreau that graces Brown & Heineman (1972), far more accurate than the late Victorian image by Edith Blake illustrated in Gilbert (2000), and incomparably superior to the pallid figure that appears in Riley (1975). In several ways it is superior to Jones’ paintings (Fig. 1) and even the Hewitson figure, most notably in the far better shape of the main, asymmetrical hindwing ‘tail’. Seymer’s homerus dominates his beautifully arranged plate, which also features four moths and intertwined cuttings of three flowering plants (Fig. 2). The 1773 plate (Fig. 3) is, we presume, one of a number of joint father and son efforts, with Henry junior given credit for the plant and the Acraea (top right), the legend stating “Plant & N o 2. H.S Jun r ”. By analogy with numerous other joint efforts in the set, Henry senior must be credited with responsibility for the Historis, Pachliopta and Papilio homerus , but in this case the remainder of the legend simply states “Rest Capt. Davies 1773.” From the style and execution, we are sure Henry senior did paint these three butterflies; we return to the matter of Captain Davies below. In this case the homerus is shown in what Seymer refers to elsewhere as “profile”, with the wings folded but with a little of the anterior margin of the forewing upperside just visible. Although the artist could never have seen the butterfly in life, “in the evening and during occasional rains the insect sits with compact, folded wings” (Avinoff, quoted in Brown & Heineman, 1972: 336). This superb painting shows the lovely underside pattern with great subtlety. Like so many of the new species introduced in the 1793 Ent. Syst ., and as already recounted, Fabricius’ description of Papilio homerus is based entirely on an illustration in the unpublished Jones’ Icones . This was based, in turn, or so it would appear at first sight, on one or more specimens in the Latham Collection (Fabricius, 1793: 181, who notes “Dom. Latham”). The name “Latham” appears on the Jones figure (Fig. 1), and was presumably accepted without question by Fabricius. This, however, was a mistake. Like many of the Jones illustrations, his image was prepared from a specimen in Dru Drury’s collection, as clearly established by Donovan (1834). If so, the original specimen on which Jones’ figure is based, if it survives, is most likely in the Macleay Collection, in Sydney. Donovan gives an account of how Drury’s single specimen of homerus was sold as Lot 305 on Saturday May 25 th , 1805, to John Francillon, for “four pounds sterling”, and was subsequently sold on again, after Francillon’s death in 1817, to “Alexander Mc’Leay, Esq. [F].L.S.” MacLeay emigrated to Australia in 1825, taking his vast entomological collection with him (Gage & Stearn, 1988). The Drury specimen should be searched for in Sydney, as it is the only candidate for an authentic name-bearing type for the nominal species Papilio homerus. Was one of Dru Drury’s collectors the source? Whatever the truth regarding the source of the specimen used by Jones, we can make the reasonable assumption that, at that still early date, not many butterfly collectors would have reached Nanny Town and worked in the Blue Mountains beyond. So it would be quite possible that the Seymers obtained their specimen or specimens, perhaps via Drury, from the same original source. Henry Seymer made his first image of this species in 1768, when Jones would have been just 18 years of age. Salmon (2000) indicates that Jones’ Icones , all 1500 of them, were painted in the three-year period 1783–1785. If so, then Jones’ work was done when the efforts of the Seymers had come to an end, but before their collection was sold in 1786 (Perceval, 1983). We can conclude that it is plausible that Seymer obtained his material from Drury, who mostly retained only “short series” in his collection (Salmon, 2000: 114). Under this scenario, the Seymer and Jones images could have been painted from material that ultimately came from the same source, but probably not the same specimen. However, further twists to this tale suggest the possibility of a different conclusion. Captain Davies. Very few of the 72 plates mention anything other than the year when painted, which of the two Seymers made the particular images, and the Latin names of the species (often added later, on accompanying sheets). Two plates by Henry junior from 1773 have the word “Oxford” added, suggesting they might have been painted or based on material from there, and another bears the name of Henry Smeathman, a leading contemporary naturalist and collector who supplied Drury, among others, with material (Gilbert, 2000). One of the very few other plates to bear any such additional information is the 1773 “ homerus plate” that, as already noted above, somewhat mysteriously bears the name “Capt. Davies” where we might have expected to have seen “H.S.” (Henry Seymer senior). Could the homerus specimens have been brought from Jamaica by Davies? Captain Davies lived in Shooter’s Hill, Kent, and was known to both Drury and Seymer (letter from Drury to Henry Seymour [sic], circa August 1772, Drury letters folio [257]; see also folios [204], [208]: Sherborn, 1937). From the Society’s Pulteney records, it seems that Davies visited Hanford House in 1772 and again in 1775 (Seymer letters 83, 111, in Pulteney correspondence). So far, however, we have not found evidence of a direct connection between Davies and Jamaica. Moreover, if 1772 were the first connection between ...