PREFACE. 



FoK some time past I have been rearranging the North American Noctuidse in my collec- 

 tion and incorporating therein the acquisitions of the last twenty years ; in doing this I found 

 a number of species which I am unable to identify either through the bibliography, or the exami- 

 nation of other collections, or by the aid of specialists, the result of which is the issuing of this 

 jjamphlet. My intention was to give a photogravure plate of the species described, but unfor- 

 tunately, with all the care and trouble possible, the results were in nowise satisfactory. I fear 

 we are not far enough advanced in the mysteries of the art. Could I have had something pro- 

 duced that would have equalled the "Lichtdruck von Kimmler u. Jonas in Dresden," published 

 in the Berl. Ent. Zeitschrift, I would indeed have been happy, but here it is impossible ; the 

 photographic figures were so misleading that I dropj^ed the idea of the plate at once, and to 

 draw it on stone as I did in former years is too great an undertaking with the limited time at 

 my disposal. 



/ But rather than leave the things as unnamed blots in my collection, I concluded to describe 

 them without figuring, though a friend reminds me that I have said many times, "a descrij)tion 

 without a figure was good for nothing," and in most cases I fear that opinion still holds. But I 

 am only joining a big band of sinners, dead and alive, whose descriptions I have worried and 

 wearied over oft ; but I trust others may not have to worry over my efforts to the same extent, 

 as the types are all carefully marked in my collection, and it is scarce likely that when I can 

 no longer attend to it, owing to my leaving this world, that it will not find some permanent 

 abiding-place, where those who desire may consult and refer to it. At any rate, as I cannot get 

 a plate that is creditable, I will not offer a decej)tive 2)hotograph or miserable half-tone, de- 

 spite that my friend Prof. J. B. Smith (who in his "Catalogue Biographical and Synonymical, 

 Noctuidfe Bor. Am.," has done more to advance the study of that family as regards the North 

 American species than all his contemporaries combined) kindly tells me my "descriptions have 

 usually been of the most perfunctory form" and begs me to issue the plate along, that otherwise 

 I "will impose a burden of unrecognizable sjDecies upon the future worker." Probably he is 

 right, but as I have just said, the tyjDcs will remain to speak for themselves, and regarding 



myself, as " Says the great Pinlez Fernando, 

 What can a man do 

 More than he can do 1" 



HERMAN STRECKER. 



Reading, Pa., U.S.A., 



September 15, 1898. 



m 



