Vill INTRODUCTION. 
no special remark. Seven genera and nineteen species are noticed, six of the latter 
being described as new; five of the species are peculiar. 
The Pyralide are extremely numerous in Central America, ranking next to the 
Geometride in number. 502 species, with 145 new, are enumerated, all referred to 
previously characterized genera; the number of the latter, 198, is inordinately large, 
and no doubt will have to be reduced. Of the total number of species, 224 are as yet. 
only known from the region under investigation. 
The total number of species of the above-mentioned families here enumerated is 
3639, belonging to 1026 genera, and forty additional species are noticed in the 
Appendix, making the total 3679. 
Forty-one genera and 1312 species are treated as new; and to the latter number 
must be added 238 others, described by me elsewhere, from material got together by 
our Editors and myself, but figured in this work, making the total number of new 
species dealt with by me 1550. Nearly two-thirds (2189) of the species are, so far as 
at present known, peculiar to Central America. The 101 plates contain 2273 figures, 
representing upwards of 1900 species. 
The following summary (p. ix) will show at a glance the total number of genera and 
species of each of the families of Heterocera treated by me in this work, exclusive of 
the forty species enumerated in the Appendix. The last column gives the approximate 
number of species peculiar to Central America. 
To give some slight idea of the great richness of the region under investigation as 
compared with that of the only tropical fauna that has been worked out to the same 
extent, viz. that of India, Ceylon, Burmah, and the Andaman Islands, by Sir George 
Hampson, it may be noted that from that vast region he enumerates 5618 as against 
our 3639 species, which is only 1979 more than we have recorded from Central 
America, a country not nearly so well known and very much less in area. I have very 
little doubt that when Yucatan and the northern and north-western parts of Mexico 
have been explored the number of species will be greatly increased, even if they do not 
exceed the total given in the ‘ Fauna of India.’ 
With regard to the distribution of the Central-American Heterocera, it is almost 
impossible to give any generalizations, because we know so little of the species from 
