PREFACE. 



When the late N. F. Dobree presented his collection of Euro- 

 pean Noctuae to the Hull Museum, it was promised him that in 

 due course a Catalogue of the collection should be issued. A 

 remark to this effect made by the Curator of the Museum in con- 

 versation with myself two years ago led to my undertaking the 

 preparation of the promised Catalogue, and, incidentally, enabled 

 me to fill in with pleasurable, and, I hope, useful, work some of 

 the leisure hours which custom places at the disposal of a school- 

 master. 



What I have attempted in the preparation of this Catalogue 

 is to give an exact record of the collection as it now is, showing 

 when, where, and by whom the specimens contained in it were 

 obtained, describing briefly the varietal and aberrational forms 

 of each species, and giving references to corresponding figures in 

 Barrett's ' Lepidoptera of the British Islands,' South's 'Moths 

 of the British Isles,' and the yearly volumes of ' The Entomologist.' 

 By such means I have hoped to make the unique collection more 

 widely known, and more useful to students in other parts of the 

 country, as well as to those living in our remote corner of Holder- 

 ness. 



The order in which the species are here given is that in which 

 they occur in the collection, where the exigencies of space have, 

 in some cases, interfered with the placing of the species in their 

 proper scientific order. Those species which are not to be found 

 in their expected places can easily be discovered — if examples are 

 contained in the collection — on reference to the Specific Index 

 given at the end of the volume. The order in which the different 

 specimens of a series are placed is that adopted by the donor before 

 the collection left his hands. 



The collection being formed — with two exceptions — between 

 the years 1871 and 1889, the nomenclature adopted in it is, gener- 

 ally speaking, that of the 1871 edition of Dr.Staudinger's 'Catalog.' 

 Since then, however, the largely-revised edition of 1901 has been 



