Zargus Pellucidus

Thomas Vernon Wollaston published this drawing in his book ‘Insecta Maderensia’ in 1854. In the book he thanks Westwood for providing the illustrations, ‘Particularly, however, would I draw attention to the valuable help which I have received from J. O. Westwood, Esq., whose pencil has been so elaborately employed in the figures which I am thus enabled to attach, and by whom many of the minutest of the dissections were accomplished, — with a degree of delicacy, moreover, to which I did not myself at the commencement of this Work (though I have since succeeded in anatomizing the larger portion of them, likewise) lay claim.’

18. Zargus pellucidus, Woll. (Tab. I. fig. 6.). Wollaston wrote the following about this species:

‘An extremely rare insect, [...] the only four specimens which have as yet come beneath my observation having been captured by myself,—two in Madeira proper, amongst small stones and vegetation at the base of the damp perpendicular rocks about half-way up the Ribeiro de Santa Luzia, during the early spring ; and two on the Dezerta Grande, from out of the cracks of the exposed weather-beaten eminences of red volcanic soil (so well known to all who have landed on the island by their loose rotten structure, and worn, rounded forms) at the extreme head of the great northern valley, during January 1849.’