PREFACE. 



At the time of Mr. W. F. Kirby^s lamented death the 

 manuscript for the present volume was unfortunately not 

 quite completed. Moreover, there still remained a consider- 

 able amount of undetermined material upon which he was 

 then at work and which doubtless comprised a number of 

 species not enumerated in these pages. It was found 

 impossible to arrange for the inclusion of this matter in the 

 manuscript, and it was therefore decided to include only the 

 species already dealt with by Mr. Kirby, merely adding 

 those previously described species which might have been 

 omitted and filling up various "lacunae." 



This task was kindly undertaken by Mr. Charles O, 

 Waterhouse^ late Assistant-Keeper of Zoology in the British 

 Museum, and involved the compilation of keys to the genera 

 in all the later subfamilies, as well as specific keys for 

 numerous genera — often a matter of no little difficulty. 

 Mr. Waterhouse has further been good enough to assist in 

 supervising the preparation of most of the illustrations and 

 also in reading the proofs. Apart from the additions indicated 

 and the correction of certain obvious errors, the text is 

 essentially the work of Mr. Kirby, the portions for which 

 Mr. Waterhouse is responsible being enclosed in square 

 brackets. 



A. E. SHIPLEY. 



May, 1914. 



