M, METCALF, 



PREFACE 



' 



L I [' R y j 



This work is intended to take the place of Smith's List of the Lepi- 

 doptera of Boreal America (lsi-l), and to furnish a condensed catalogue 

 of North American Lepidoptera comparable to Staudinger and Rebel's 

 Catalogue of the Lepidoptera of Europe. Within a few years several 

 of the larger families of the Lepidoptera have been fully catalogued, 

 so that it seemed both unnecessary and inadvisable to repeat all of this 

 matter. To avoid this, and yet make these references easily available, 

 a catalogue reference is given at the head of each family, abbreviated 

 "C," and it is specifically referred to by pages or numbers. The 

 original reference to each species is, however, always repeated, except 

 in the case of old synonyms. All specific synonyms are included, but 

 where the reference is not given it will be found in the Catalogue 

 referred to. 



Within the last ten years the classification of the Lepidoptera has 

 been radically altered. No exact consensus of opinion as to the proper 

 sequence of families and genera has been reached, but the recent 

 workers are so closely in accord as to the principles involved and the 

 resultant general, scheme that we seem to be somewhere near a natural 

 classification. In the present list I have followed my own views, 

 based largely on larval characters, in the arrangement of the family 

 and supcrfamily groups. The system does not differ in general from 

 that of Edward Meyrick, which has been adopted by the British 

 Museum in the Catalogue of the Lepidoptera Phahemv, though the 

 order of groups is somewhat different. I have placed the butterflies 

 first. since they seem on the whole "higher' 11 than the moths, and this 

 course agrees with the usual custom. I follow with the Sphingida3 

 and Saturnians for the same reasons, although, in venation, they are 

 more generalized than some of the Noctuid groups. The list, as a 

 whole, proceeds from higher to lower forms, as in Staudinger and 

 Rebel's catalogue. 



The butterflies follow in the main Dr. H. Skinner's recent catalogue 

 as to species. I have restored the genera as worked out by Dr. S. H. 

 Scudder. I have not been able to give the matter full study, so that 

 some of the genera are doubtless not pure, while there are probably too 

 many of them; but as they stand they seem more in harmony with generic 



