The 6th June is Butterfly Education and Awareness Day. To mark it, this post contains the description of the Old World Swallowtail butterfly from Historia Insectorum, which was published posthumously under the name of John Ray in 1710 but was based upon the research and work begun by Francis Willughby. Ray gave this butterfly a descriptive name of “Papilio alis amplissimis, flavicante & nigro coloribus pulcherrime variegatis, interioribus caudatis”, which translates as “A But

The 20th May 2026 is World Bee Day. To mark it, this post will focus on the description of the Western Honey Bee provided in Historia Insectorum, which was written in Latin. That book was published posthumously in 1710 by the Royal Society under the name of John Ray but it was based on the observations and notes of Francis Willughby. What is commonly known today as the Western Honey Bee was called the Common Honey Bee or Apis domestica seu vulgaris alvearium by Ray and Willug

The 7th June 2025 is Butterfly Education and Awareness Day and, to mark this, we thought we would write about “Mr Ray’s Purple Streak Butterfly”. This was the English common name given by James Petiver in 1702 to the butterfly that is commonly known today as the Purple Hairstreak (Favonius quercus) . James Petiver was a friend and sometime assistant of John Ray. Petiver was subsequently described as “the father of British butterflies” as a result of his detailed work on the i