SOUTH AFRICAN CATEIiPILLARS 175 



The time for the preparation of a booklet for the de 

 termination of the South African caterpillar has not yet 

 arrived, and will not arrive for a considerable time. AVliat 

 is needed first of all is assiduous collecting and breed- 

 ing of caterpillai^s with careful and detailed descriptions. 

 The writer will be pleased to receive any immature stages 

 for study and identification if possible. Fresh or pro- 

 pared material, alcoholic or dry, will be equally accept- 

 able. 



Introduction. 



The pursuit of entomology in South Africa has thus far 

 been confined mostly to the collecting and classification 

 of the adult forms. This is only natural in a country 

 which is, entomologically speaking, quite young. Yes, 

 we would go even further, and say that the forming of 

 a representative collection and the identification of or 

 naming and describing of the various species is the first 

 essential, the pioneer work in entomology. In order to 

 know what we are writing about, the species under dis- 

 cussion must have a name. x\nd while a great deal still 

 remains to be done in this direction, there are now some 

 very fair representations of our insect fauna in the 

 various collections of museums and private individuals in 

 South Africa. 



But amongst all these thousands of insects thus brought 

 together, there are onlv a very few of which the immature 

 stages are known. Confining ourselves to the Lepidop- 

 tera, as in the other orders a still smaller percentage of 

 the pre-adult stages have been studied, we find that thus 

 far only a small proportion of the caterpillars have been 

 described and figured. And these are for the greater 

 part only the larger and more conspicuous ones, or such 

 as are of economic importance ; the former on account of 

 their striking characters as regards size and markings, 

 the latter because the study of the life history of the 

 species w^as found to be essential. 



Such descriptions as exist are for the most part rather 

 vague, and, in most cases, based only upon the full grown 



