Thorictus Westwoodii

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.’

172. Thorictus Westwoodii, Woll. (Tab). IV. fig. 6.). Wollaston wrote the following about this species:

‘Apparently one of the rarest of the Madeiran Coleoptera, the only two specimens which have come under my notice having been captured by myself near Funchal, —one from beneath a stone (in company with Cossypliodes Wollastonii) on the rocky ledge above the Praya Pormoza, May 8th, 1818 ; and the other, in a similar position, on the cliff to the eastward of the town, immediately beyond the Ribeiro de Sao Goncalo, in January 1819.’