IXTEODUCTIOX. vii 



He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 183'.), and obtained a vScholarship, passing 

 out as 2Gth Wrangler in 1843. After some further stay at Cambridge, during which he 

 occupied himself in tutorial duties, he came to London to study for the profession of Civil 

 Engineer ; but on being offered the appointment of Principal of the Martiniere College, he 

 went out to Calcutta in November 1854, having previously married Miss Montford, daughter 

 of the Vicar of East Winch, in Norfolk. He joined the Asiatic Society in July 1850, 

 and towards the close of the same year succeeded me as its Secretary, continuing: to hold 

 that office till 1864. 



The new and rich fauna which now offered itself at once fascinated him ; and as I had 

 then a considerable collection of Bengal Lepidoptera, consisting for the most part of tlie 

 larcrer Diurnals and Nocturnals obtained bv the late Mr. Robert Frith, he was a frequent 

 visitor at my house. Sharing as he did my interest in tlie transformations of the many 

 species which could be observed in the neighbourhood of Allipore, the breeding-cages an<l 

 the progress made by my native artist * in figuring the several stages of the imago had 

 for him a special attraction. His experience as a collector, and consequent familiaritj 

 with the larvae of British species, gave a point to his observations and criticisms which often 

 proved of the greatest assistance to me. 



He had not been many months in Calcutta before he reported to Mr. Stainton his 

 first discoveries of Tineina, a group which no Indian entomologist had yet ventured to 

 touch. His practised eyes detected traces of a miner on the leaf of Bauhinia }mr}mrea ; and 

 LithocoUetis Bauhinia? was, I, believe, the first Microlepidopterous species that ever reached 

 this country from India. It was described in 185G, with two other species, by Mr. Stainton 

 in the Trans. Entom. Soc, new ser. vol. iii. p. 301. Mr. Atkinson at the same time became 

 a Member of the Entomological Society. 



How assiduously and with w^hat success he pursued his researches in this new and 

 difficult field of Indian Entomological research, may be gathered from the opening remarks 

 of a later paper by Mr. Stainton when describing, in 1858, twenty-five species of Indian 

 Microlepidoptera (Trans. Entom. Soc. new ser. vol. v. p. 111). One of these species, the 

 type of a new genus of Elachistidte named after its discoverer, Atkinsonia derodendronella, 

 1 hope to see reproduced, as this work proceeds, from a drawing in my own possession. 



In a thii-d paper of Mr. Stainton's, describing and figuring nine exotic species of the 

 genus Gracilaria (Trans. Ent. Soc. 3rd ser. vol. i. p. 2',)1, 18G2), I find that five species were 



* In one of his letters to Mr. Stainton I find him paying the follo\ring just tribute to the drawings of this 

 artist, the late Munshi Zynulabdin, who for many successive years worked in Mr. Frith's and my employ : — " His 

 execution is as good as any I ever saw ; in fact it could hardly be better ; but he has never drawn under a micro- 

 scope." 



hi 



