Cryptamorpha Musae

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.’

127. Cryptamorpha Musae, Woll. (Tab. IV. fig. l.). Wollaston wrote the following about this species:

‘A most elegant insect, and apparently extremely scarce ; being confined, so far as I am aware, to hot sheltered spots in and immediately around Funchal. It was first discovered by myself, early in August 1850, in the garden of the English Church in the Beco das Aranhas, beneath the outer fibre of the stems of the Banana (Musa sapientum,, Linn.),—where it would appear more especially to reside, subsisting (much in the same manner as the Psammoecus bipiunctatus does on the Carex acuta of central and northern Europe) on the sap with which that gigantic Monocotyledon abounds [...] Professor Heer informs me that he met with it sparingly on the flowers of a Calocasia, in Funchal, during the spring of 1851 ; and I have lately received a specimen from M. Dohrn of Stettin, communicated to him by M. Hartung.’