595.78: Thousands and Thousands of Butterflies

The Macrolepidoptera of the World, by Adalbert Seitz

Detail of one of over 1400 color plates in Seitz's Macrolepidoptera of the World

…Another amazing resource from the collection of the St. Louis Public Library!

This fascinating and stunning work by German entomologist Adalbert Seitz was his attempt to catalog all the butterflies and moths of the world.

In all, the set contains 16 volumes, with over 1400 (!) chromolithographed pages of butterflies and moths.

Production on this magnum opus began in the first decade of the 20th century in Germany, and volumes continued to be issued into the 1950s, when the project was abandoned.

The books were printed in German, English, and French.  The St. Louis Public Library is fortunate to own all 16 volumes of the German edition (Gross-Schmetterlinge Der Erde), and some volumes of the English version.

You can see more at the Biodiversity Heritage Library, a digital library created and maintained by a group of natural history and botanical libraries, including the Missouri Botanical Garden Library.  The images of Seitz’s work in this online resource were contribuited by the Smithsonian Libraries.

To arrange to see the butterflies in person, please contact Brian Novak at www.slpl.org