Отправлено: 02.08.06 12:42. Заголовок: Cyclopides

Циклопидесов куда складывать?





My question concern entomology. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Conan Doyle wrote : "I was chasing a Cyclopides. He is very rare, and seldom found in the late autumn".
I don't find any information about cyclopides on the Web. It is certainly a species of butterfly or moth.
Could you give me more infornations about cyclopides and identify the one in the story? The Hound located in Devonshire (England) during october 1900.
Many Thanks. Jean-Pierre

Cyclopides was an old name for several South African Skippers (defined as "Any of numerous butterflies of the families Hesperiidae and Megathymidae, having a hairy mothlike body, hooked tips on the antennae, and a darting flight pattern") of the family Hesperiidae. Unfortunately, "Cyclopides" actually referred to many different skippers of the otherwise unrelated genuses Acleros, Ampittia, Astictopterus, Kedestes, Metisella, and Tsitana. Only one of these species, the "Bush Hopper" Ampittia dioscorides camertes (originally Cyclopides camertes) was found outside of subsaharan Africa, although dioscorides are found only in India, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka. Since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was well known for inventing species in some of his other books, it is likely that he liked the name, without knowing that the only Cyclopides in England were mounted in the collections of well traveled lepidopterists. Источник