One of the first books on butterflies that I was given was "Butterflies of the British Isles" by Richard South. As well as colour plates of the adults, this book contains black and white reproductions of illustrations of the larvae. Opposite page 50 is a plate purporting to depict the larva of the Pale Clouded Yellow. Now I must admit that decades passed before I noticed that something was wrong with this illustration. It shows a spray of Horseshoe Vetch with a caterpillar that has pale lateral and dorso-lateral lines and numerous black spots. In other words it is plainly not the Pale Clouded Yellow, but what we now know as Berger's Clouded Yellow. At the foot of the plate are the words " After Hübner". Hübner will be a familiar authorial name to anyone who uses the scientific names of lepidoptera, but is it the same man, I wanted to know.
One day, at least 15 years ago, while browsing among the book stalls outside the National Film Theatre in London, I discovered a slim volume entitled: Das kleine Schmetterlingsbuch. It has an introductory text by one Friedrich Schnack, which speaks of the "last elves and sylphs of the meadows and woods", but also contains sound information on the basic biology of butterflies. However, what made me part with £1.50 were the reproductions of 24 hand-coloured engravings, depicting 50 species of European butterflies, by Jacob Hübner. Hübner was born in Augsburg on 20th June 1761 and died there on 13th September 1826. For his day job he worked as a designer or pattern drawer (Musterzeichner) for an Augsburg cotton weaving mill. He seems to have found time to travel widely and to publish major works containing descriptions of species new to science, as well as illustrating many species with his fine engravings. One source claims that he illustrated 3600 species of butterflies and moths. The plates in my slim volume are taken from his Sammlung europäischer Schmetterlinge. Another major work of his is Geschichte europäischer Schmetterlinge, and I suppose that this contains the original of the plate in South.
So there we have it. Hübner evidently depicted the larva of Berger's Clouded Yellow under the impression that it was the Pale Clouded Yellow. Perhaps Berger's Clouded Yellow was the commoner species in his part of Germany, or perhaps he had seen the larva of the Pale Clouded Yellow and failed to distinguish it from the Clouded Yellow, which it closely resembles.
There has been some doubt over the valid scientific name of Berger's Clouded Yellow. For some time it was known as C.australis Verity 1911, but it was found that the name C.alfacariensis Ribbe 1905 had priority. Of course both these gentlemen thought they were describing sub-species of C.hyale. I recently learnt that three other authors have applied valid names to this species that pre-date Ribbe. They are: C.meridionalis Krulikowsky 1903, C.alba Rühl 1893 and oldest of all, C.sareptensis Alphéraky 1875. According to the rules this last name should be adopted in place of alfacariensis, but in June 2006 an application was made to the ICZN proposing " the conservation of the specific name by giving it precedence over three little know senior subjective synonyms". The ICZN delivered its opinion 2180 in September 2007 to that effect, so we do not need to get used to a new name.
I attach a sample plate of Hübner's that appears in Das kleine Schmetterlingsbuch.
