Less recent authors, such as Cramer, Hewitson, Felder and others 

 have also described hundreds of new butterflies, but they were actuated 

 by purely aesthetic or sporting considerations and their works lack the 

 scientific basis and cohesion which are so striking in Fruhstorfer's works. 

 D^ O. Staudinger, who worked in the same field, was his predecessor and 

 much admired model, and de Niceville, Rothschild and Dr Jordan were 

 his collaborators, He was born on March 7th, 1866. In 1888, at the age 

 of 22, he started on his first collecting expedition, to Brazil. During his 

 two years' stay in South America he acquired an intimate knowledge 

 of the fauna of South America — which is of special importance for all 

 students of tropical insects — and was subsequently able to contribute 

 to Seitz's great work important articles on several little-known families 

 of butterflies peculiar to those regions. These contributions compare 

 very favourably with those of the other authors in the same field ; they 

 seemed to me like oases in a sandy waste. From the financial point of 

 view also Fruhstorfer's South American journey must have been success- 

 ful, for as early as i8go, after a prolonged stay in Ceylon in search of 

 new specimens, he had acquired complete financial independence and, free 

 from all impediments, was working in Java where he devoted more than 

 three years to entomological research in every part of that island paradise. 

 He declared that his stay at Java had marked the beginning of his success 

 as a collector" - — a career which, at the outset, he had found fuU of diffi- 

 culty — and that "the years spent in that island had been the happiest 

 of his life and the most active, the most memorable of his youth". Those 

 who know Java, that earthly paradise, will sympathise with him. Fruh- 

 storfer's knowledge of the fauna of Java has never been excelled and even 

 the Dutch who, after all, have possessed and exploited the island for 

 more than three hundred years have never produced anyone who could 

 be compared with him. He was the first to recognize the remarkable 

 difference which exists between the fauna of the western part of the 

 island where the rainfall is abundant and that of the dry eastern part, 

 and during those years he discovered a large number of new species and 

 varieties. 



The collection he formed at Java remained his most cherished pos- 

 session. It was kept separate, and was never amalgamated with the rest 

 of his Indo-Malayan collection. There was something touching in his 

 love for all the creatures of that island which, compared with those of 

 the same group in the other islands, he always declared to be the most 

 beautiful, the most finely shaped and the most gorgeously coloured of 

 all. 



His enthusiasm may have been justified in many cases, but it is 



