Huston, quit the ganya and check this out!

"Butterflies of the Neotropical region. Part 1" is part of a mammoth work covering all butterflies of the world. This is the first volume dealing with South and Central America. It contains sections on the families Papilionidae (swallowtails) and Pieridae (the Whites).

Sometimes, you can find really strange things in books on natural history. I was reminded of Huston Smith's book "Forgotten Truth" when looking through Bernard D'Abrera's work. Am I getting crazy again? Well, not entirely.

In his perennial classic, Smith claims (only part flippantly) that a hummingbird might be the Platonic form of a bird pretending to be a butterfly, and that it just fell from the sky one day, with no previous evolutionary history. I couldn't help thinking of this rather peculiar alternative to Darwinism when I saw that D'Abrera's book on butterflies starts off with two verses from the Vulgate, and an extensive quote from Thomas à Kempis.

For reasons all his own, the author quotes the epistle to the Colossians, 1:16-17: "For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him: And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist." Amen to that, brother! The statement by Kempis is less clear: "What signifies making a great dispute about hidden and obscure things, which we shall not to be reproved in the judgement, for having been ignorant of? (...) And what matter is it to us of genera and species? He to whom the Eternal Word speaks is delivered from a multitude of opinions". I never read "The Imitation of Christ", but something tells me Kempis wasn't talking about butterflies...

I guess D'Abrera is advising his entomological colleagues to stop arguing over the finer points of lepidopteran taxonomy, and simply enjoy their natural beauty. A noble sentiment. Except, of course, that all butterflies in this book are in pinned conditions and taken from the collection of the British Museum. LOL.

Well, at least it's good to know that the thorough explorers of the Neotropical region can't lay their hand on the Platonic form of a butterfly...