vi INTEODUCTIOX. 



purchaser to examine the novelties among the Nocturnals, and had offered to describe them 

 in the Society's Journal if the Council would find room for his paper. It was estimated 

 that the new species would number G50, thus ranged — 



Bombyces 200 



Noctuee 200 



Geometrse 200 



Pyrales 50 



and that they might be described and illustrated by uncoloured figures of selected types 

 at no great cost. Such a paper I observed might be published as an extra number of 

 the Journal, with a brief Introductory Memoir, which I would supply, on the plan fol- 

 lowed in the case of the late Mr. Blyth's Burmah Catalogues. 



The promptitude with which the Council adopted the above recommendation showed 

 their appreciation of the motives which led me to make it. The Society could not off"er a 

 more appropriate tribute to the memory of a distinguished Member and office-bearer than 

 by securing for their own publications the record of his many and valuable contributions to 

 the Lepidopterous fauna of India. 



The larger scheme of publication adopted by the Council, and their sanction of the use 

 of coloured Plates, enabled me to enlist the ever-willing services of the late Mr. Hewitson 

 in the undertaking. On learning that a quarto Plate could be placed at his disposal, he at 

 once offered to figure four of the new species of Diurnals which he had obtained from the 

 Atkinson collection, and to republish with the figures the descriptions which he had 

 already given of them in the 'Entomologists' Monthly Magazine' (Dec. 1S76). 



Plate I. of this work has now a melancholy interest, inasmuch as its proofs were 

 corrected on the dying bed of this enthusiastic Lepidopterist. His last note to me in con- 

 nexion with the proofs is dated May 23rd, five days only before his death. 



I proceed to give a short personal notice of the assiduous Collector whose successful 

 labours in the field will be found recorded and illustrated by such competent hands in the 

 following pages. 



William Stephen Atkinson was the eldest son of the Rev. Thomas D, Atkinson, of 

 Chesterton, in Suffolk, where he was born in September 1820. He was educated at home ; 

 and his boyish tastes for the study of nature seem to have been developed on Cannock 

 Chase, on his father becoming Vicar of Rugeley. It was here that he commenced what 

 gradually became a very complete collection of British Lepidoptera, including the Tineina, 

 which latter were with him favourite objects of study. 



