^iii PREFACE. 



respectively of Sumatra, Burma and the North-Eastern Indian districts, * and in a still much 

 less degree to those of Java and Ceylon. lu fact, without some reference to the hntterflies of 

 Borneo, Sumatra, and North-Eastern India, a knowledge of those of the Malay Peninsula is as 

 superficial as would be that of those of England when restricted and uncompared with the 

 Ehopalocera of the other portions of the Palearctic region. So closely are many of these 

 Malay species allied to other surrounding local forms or species, that far more accuracy could 

 have been attained had a larger and wider fauna been described. Thus, owing to the exigency 

 of the case, I have treated Euphva diocletiamis as a distinct species from the Continental 

 Indian E. rhadamaiithiis and the Bornean E. loioci. Now had the Ehopalocera of the whole 

 Indo-Malayan region been enumerated the identification would have been more philosophically 

 as follows : — 



Euphva diocletiamis. 



Var. a. rhadamantlius. Continental India. 



Var. b. dioch'tianiis. Tenasserim, Malay Peninsula, Cochin China, Sumatra. 



Var. c. alcidice. Java. 



Var. d. lowci. Borneo. 



This would point out to the student that he is dealing with a number of distinct local 

 races, or, as might be better expressed, local phases of one dominant form or species. 

 Through this cause the enumeration of a local fauna, such as of the Malay Peninsula, is 

 necessarily narrow in principle, and lacks the philosophical breadth which raises descriptive 

 Entomology to a true biological standard. 



It is very satisfactory to find how many good observations are made by collectors abroad, 

 and how much our knowledge is increased by not only their facts, but frequently also by their 

 suggestions. It is not to be accepted as canonical, though frequently tacitly advanced, that all 

 good work in entomological literature can only be done at home. The observer abroad is 

 untrammelled by much of the obscurations of the Scribes and Pharisees found in our learned 

 societies, and many a good naturalist has been spoilt by the jealousies and opposition of many 

 who profess the same study as himself.} When one recalls the names of such observers as 

 Humboldt, Darwin, Wallace, Bates, Belt, and Fritz Midler, Emerson's opinion of Thoureau 

 is recalled : "he saw as with a microscope, heard as with ear-trumpet, and his memory was 

 a photographic register of all he saw and heard." The study of butterflies does not consist 

 only in a recognisable knowledge of their imago condition, but the egg 4: is a structure of 

 wonderful diversity, and the larval or caterpillar condition affords a field of research of which 

 the ground may be said to be only just broken. It would be in breeding that the writer — were 

 he permitted to sojourn in the Peninsula again — would find his employment, and till the 

 life-histories are worked out, and the egg and larval stages properly described and figured, 



* As found in the valleys and plains, and not above an height of 3500 or 4000 feet. 



]■ It is not uncommon to find that the claim to have originally described a species, or to be acknowledged as the 

 authority on some genus which no one else has studied, affords as much satisfaction as though the writer had created 

 'Hamlet' or written the 'Origin of Species.' 



I A new classification of Ehopalocera, based on the structure of the egg, has jutt been proposed by Mr. Wm. Doherty 

 (Journ. Asiat. Soc. Bcng. vol. Iv. p. 108 (1886). 



