THE LEPIDOPTEROLOGICAL BOOKS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 25 



several of the lepidoptera, and Snckow in his AnatomiAch-phydolniihclu' 

 UntersucJnni'jcii (1818) inchuled DendroUuim pini. Lyonet's important 

 work BecJwrchcfi sur V Anatomic et Ics metamorphoses iVInsectes, thou^^h 

 written a good deal before these, was not published till considerably 

 after them — being brought out posthumously in 1832. 



But whatever the nature of the early work, whether iconographic, 

 systematic, anatomical or what not, it lacked the coherence and unity 

 which are born of the recognition of some great underlying principle. 

 Such exact work as, for instance, Newport's on the anatomy of Sphinx 

 liijustri, or the whole of his article " Insecta " in Todd's t'ljclopaedia, 

 must indeed be considered as Avork for all time ; but it is not surprising 

 to find the bulk of the effort of the first half century culminating in 

 such books (admiral)le in their way) as those of Guenee (1852-57), 

 Htainton's Manual (1857-59), Heinemann's SchmettcrUnfic DetiUchlamh 

 (1859, (tc), and the like — or, in another direction, as Speyer's 

 (jeo/iraphisrJie Verhreitunij (1858-62). It needed the advent of 

 Darwinism to give the needful impulse in the direction of further 

 developments ; and it was most opportune that the Orii/in of Species 

 appeared just at the time when the systematisation of some of our 

 principal faimte had been placed on so satisfactory a basis. To be 

 sure, Darwinism has had to encounter a good deal of opposition from 

 lepidopterists, from the inane attacks of the Eev. F. 0. Morris to the 

 important Schach der Danrinismns ! of Schilde (forming Bd. xxxiv., of 

 the Jlerl. Ent. Zeit.), and the subtle attempts of that excellent Dutch 

 entomologist, Piepers, to undermine it in certain vital points, while 

 Gabriel Koch (the author of three well-known books on lepidoptera) could 

 get no further than the pious but not very philosophical reflection that 

 " God gave them their protective coloration in order that they might 

 not have to struggle for existence" ; but nevertheless most readers will 

 agree with me that it is not " checkmated " yet, but that it has been 

 of incalculable service to many of our lepidopterists, in enabling them 

 to correlate the enormous number of facts with which they are called 

 upon to deal, and in guiding them into profitable fields of enquiry and 

 research. 



It was not long before Bates turned Darwin's theories to account 

 in a new direction in formulating his theory of " mimicry " — first 

 made known before the Linnean Society in 1861 ; and lepidopterists 

 may congratulate themselves that it was material provided by their 

 favourite objects of study which furnished him Avith the data upon 

 which his theory rested ; in other words, that it was the lepidoptera 

 which contributed the first new confirmation of the theory of evolution. 

 Space forbids my following out the history of mimicry as further 

 studied by Wallace, Fritz Miiller, Meldola, Poulton, Belt, Trimen, 

 Finn and many others; but it has continued to be a subject mainly — 

 though not exclusively — worked out by lepidoi^terists. 



Subsequent theories and experiments based on the acceptance of 

 the principles of "natural selection" have been so many and so 

 diversified that they have permeated and almost revolutionised our 

 later nineteenth century literature and leave me in a state of consider- 

 able bewilderment as to what I ought to say and what to leave unsaid. 

 But as I have already far overstepped the limits which might reason- 

 ably have been expected of me for this article, and as the readers of 

 the Entomoloi/ist's llecurd have been kept pretty well au fait with the 



