Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
September 1777
Primary Source Reference:
Du Simitière Memorandum Books, Library of Congress, fol. 25v
Additional Source Text:
"Containing 26 different sorts of day Butterflies & in the whole about 120 flies among them 7 of the gold-Streakd Jamaica page [ ] of Sir Hans Sloane. NB I Brought from Jamaica all these Sorts and a great many more but after having kept them about 10 years the vermin destroyed them while I was absent from the city."
Notes:
As these specimens were destroyed by vermin, it is not likely that they were ever exhibited by Du Simitière.
The "gold-Streakd" butterfly may have been the species that Hans Sloane numbered XXII and described as Papilio mediae magnitudinis, alis supina parte fuscis in his A voyage to the islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica : with the natural history of the herbs and trees, four-footed beasts, fishes, birds, insects, reptiles, &c. of the last of those islands, vol. 2 (London, 1725), p. 218 and plate 237 (detail pictured here). Sloane wrote of this butterfly that its "first Pair of Wings . . have long yellow Belts or Streaks."
The donor, Andrew Caldwell (1722-1788), was a Philadelphia merchant who during the Revolution commanded the Pennsylvania Navy which repelled the British ships Roebuck and Liverpool (Memorial to Commodore John Barry [Philadelphia, 1907], p. 3).
