PREFACE. 



A DESCRIPTION of Malay Butterflies needs neither apology nor defence. All such 

 publications appeal to two universal sentiments, the love of Nature — the keystone of the 

 sense of beauty — and the love of Science* — which is equivalent to man's innate craving 

 after knowledge ; and the first has frequently prompted the second, so that a mere collector 

 of butterflies often develops into an excellent entomologist. There are three methods under 

 which a faunistic study may be pursued, and these seldom appeal in an equal degree to the 

 same worker. They may be described as the classificatory, in which the species and genera 

 are analytically described and enumerated in their proper families or groups ; the comparative, 

 by which an analysis of difi"erent faunas afi"ords the materials which support the generalisations 

 us to geographical distribution; and the evolutionary or really biological method— often the 

 first only— which seeks in embryonic development, and the peculiarities of surface colouring 

 and markings to form some conception of how living animals came to have the forms and 

 appearance which they possess. These methods are dependent on each other, and the most 

 profound generalisations have been made by those who have done much of that pure and simple 

 anatomical and classificatory work, t which by some theorists of the day, who would explain 

 the problems of Nature from the revelations of their own inner consciousness, is looked upon 

 as the amusement of a few unphilosophical pedants. 



To understand these Malay butterflies, of which 503 species, arranged in 143 genera, 

 are here described, and, with very few exceptions, figured, several preliminary positions require 

 to be mastered, such as the physical dimensions and position of the area on which our fauna 

 is found, the extent to which at present that fauna has been investigatetl, and what 

 relationship it bears to the various insular and continental faunas which surround it. 



To define our area is to commence our difficulties, for most faunistic works bear the name 

 of a region which has not been thoroughly— often very imperfectly— explored by the collecting 

 natm-alist, and consequently we are sometimes only describing a part under the designation of 

 the whole. This element of ixirtial knowledge is very pronounced in ' PJiopalocera Malayana,' 

 for though the Malay Peninsula may be described roughly as extending from the Isthmus of 



* The butterfly has frequently fuIfiUed an unscientific roh, as in the notion of the "leyp-bya," or^butterfly spirit of the 

 Burman, a corrupt excrescence of Buddhism (cf. 'The Burman, his Life, and Notions,' by Shway Yoe, voL u. chap. xi). 

 According to Friederich ('Die Symbolik und Mythologie der Natur') the butterfly was a symbol of death, as sigmfymg the soul 

 separated from the body ; for which reason it was represented as sitting on an empty skull. One species was speciaUy thought 

 to announce disaster and a dry summer. 



t As Darwin, who produced the ' Monograph of the Cirripedia,' and Huxley, Haeckel, Wallace, Bates, and others, who 

 have all contributed much to the same class of Biological literature. 



h 



