12 _ INTRODUCTION. 
collected by A. Forrer in N.W. Mexico and the Tres Marias Islands; a second set of 
the very large number of Coleoptera obtained by C. T. Hége in his two expeditions 
to Mexico, the ‘first set now in the Berlin Museum, having been retained by his 
employer, Mr. Flohr ; collections of insects from Messrs. Becker, Biolley, Blancaneaux, 
Conradt, Gaumer, Janson, Lankester, Morrison, Staudinger, Underwood, Van Patten, 
Wittkugel, &c. In addition to this material, we had, of course, the whole of that 
procured by our other collectors, E. Arcé, G. C. Champion, and H. Rogers. Further 
details are appended on pp. 44, 45. 
All the insects from Mexico and Central America, the Sallé and Janson collections 
of beetles, our own general collections of birds and butterflies, and the Henshaw 
collection of birds, have been presented by us to the British Museum, and are being 
gradually incorporated with the National Collection. 
The various accessions are enumerated in detail in Vol. II. of the ‘ History of the 
Collections contained in the Natural History Departments of the British Museum’ 
(1906) and in the subsequent Annual Reports of that Institution. The first instalment 
of Neotropical birds (50,120 specimens) was presented in January 1885, and other 
instalments followed from time to time till the whole of them became the property 
of the Nation. Amongst the insects, up to 1906, the total number of specimens 
given in the ‘History’ is as follows: Coleoptera (85,920), Lepidoptera Rhopalocera 
(17,829), Lepidoptera Heterocera (12,883), Diptera (17,525), Hymenoptera (10,004), 
Rhynchota Heteroptera (5543), &c. These figures do not include the Rhynchophora 
or weevils (22,793), the Staphylinide and water-beetles (9474), the Odonata (3000), 
‘the Rhynchota Homoptera (5509), the supplementary unworked parasitic Hymenoptera 
(6293), &c. From 1906 onwards the remaining collections have been handed over 
to the Museum as soon as the enumeration of the species was completed; that of 
the Coleoptera was finished in 1911. Our own general collection of butterflies 
probably included nearly 100,000 specimens, and the beetles alone from Mexico and 
Central America perhaps double that number. Besides these a considerable number 
of mammals, reptiles, fish, &c., of which no account was kept, were presented to the 
National Museum. 
F. D. G. 
