I.EPIDOPTKROLOGIE COMPAREE II 



appea! to those who delighl their leisure with their i^ardens and 

 with country ramblcs al hoinc. The British Army has marched, 

 suffcred, and loilcd ()\cr hall I{,uropc, Asia, and a j^roat part of 

 Africa durino- thc nnghty strugglc. The Odysscy of its wan- 

 dcnngs is yci inconiplrlc. Offtccrs and prnatc soldicrs hâve been 

 drawn from ail sorts and conditions of mon; and it is safe to 

 say that, whether in the boon sunmicr of thc Arctic, thc ardours 

 of désert campaign in Mcsopotaniia, Palestine and Libya, or m 

 the long watches of the v,estcrn and Ralkan trenches, the natu- 

 ralist, the obserA^er and writer, has been " takin' notes. 



In thc previous Great W'ar the activities cspccially of the ento- 

 mologists who speciahzed ni Lepidoptera vvere hardly affectcd. 

 Thc old Aurelians went thcir way scrcnely. The parent Entomo- 

 logical Society of L.ondon was boni soon after Trafalgar. The 

 catalogue of standard works piiblished in France and Germany 

 during the Revolutionary period aiid the Napoleonic campaigns 

 is amazmg, ahkc in substance of printecl matter and in wealth 

 of illustration. To the fathers of natural history thc war, until 

 actually withm their borders, was as " the rumble of a distant 

 druni " ; it barely ruffled the calm of daily hfe. 



It has been otherwise in belligcrent countrics since 1914, and 

 for illustrated books on the subjcct in France alone wiU be 

 found a work of the first rank undertakcn and regularly issued. 

 Throughout thc whole period M. Charles Oberthiir, of Rennes, 

 has maintamed thc publication of his " Etudes de Lép'idoptéro- 

 logie cojiiparèe. " Soon after the termination of the " Etudes 

 d'Entomologie, " begun m 1876 and compieted in 1902, he took 

 up thc présent séries. The work was laid aside for a time when 

 the first and second fascicules had appeared ; but from 1909 

 onwards they hâve followed one another in unbroken séquence. 

 They form a notable comment on the Entente of scientific litcra- 

 ture. In addition to the author's own voluminous and valuable 

 contributions, they include papers by a variety of writers of other 

 than German nationality- -those by French and English natu- 

 ralists predominating. Rut w^hereas the Old Masters relied upon 



