PRKFACK. 



The American Entomological Society pnrchased the plates of this work from 

 Mr. W. H. Edwards, and I considered them of sufficient importance to ask this 

 Society to undertake their pnblication. We possess one copy colored and thirteen 

 plain. Mr. Edwards speaks of twenty-eight (?) plates, but our sets run to t\vent\-seven 

 only. There is one copy of the plates in the library of Cornell University, and one 

 copy in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City ; those I 

 believe are both colored. The Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences owns twenty- 

 five to thirty sets, of which two are colored. Many of the figures are excellent, and 

 some, as Mr. Edwards states, very poor. There are one hundred and thirty-two 

 figures. I have given a list of the species in accordance with Kirby's Catalogue 

 of the Heterocera, Vol. I, li»02. 



HENRY SKINNER. 



I am asked by Dr. Skinner to tell what I know concerning the making of 

 these plates of the American Sphingidae. The winter of 18()2-1863 I spent in New 

 York, and found that Tohn W. Weidemeye r and Stephen Calverley had begun a 

 work that was intended to give illustrations of all the known species of the Sphin- 

 gidfe found either in North or South America, and Plate I had already issued. On 

 that Plate mav be seen the names of the two gentlemen. I found that a German 

 lithograph artist by name of Walo had made the drawings on the stone from life, 

 and had colored one plate for each of the parties interested. Also each had fifty or 

 seventy-five plain plates struck off for himself. I asked that I might join in the pro- 

 ject, and was admitted on equal terms with the others. My name was put on Plate 

 III, and is on all that followed. The in.sects were provided from the collections of 

 one or other of the projectors. I, myself, furnished the example of cllo figured. It 

 was taken in my father's house, at Hunter Village, in the Catskills, on the night of 

 September, 11, 1865. It was perfectly fresh, and apparently on its first flight. It 

 seemed therefore to have come from a larva that had lived in the neighborhood. So 

 far as I now recollect the species had never been seen within hundreds of miles so 

 far north. No letter press was printed with the plates. It was understood that Mr. 



