INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 



Some few years since Mr. Dukinfield Jones, a young Civil 

 Engineer of Liverpool, called at the Museum for the purpose 

 of naming a small collection of Moths and Butterflies which 

 he had collected during a recent professional visit to Brazil. 

 Calling to mind the numerous collections of a similar kind 

 brought home by travellers or sent from the country for mere 

 trade purposes, I took the liberty of suggesting to him, that 

 instead of confining his attention, on his proposed return to 

 Brazil, to procuring and preserving Lepidoptera in their 

 perfect state, he would obtain much more satisfactory results 

 by collecting and studying their metamorphoses. The occu- 

 pation would be in itself far more interesting, with much 

 greater promise of additions to knowledge. 



This seed of suggestion fell on good ground, as shown by 

 his papers in the Proceedings of the Literary and Philosophi- 

 cal Society of Liverpool. The present communication is 

 further evidence of its author's zeal and diligence in cul- 

 tivating the field suggested to him ; but by no means 

 displays all that he has accomplished. In a letter dated 

 March 13, 1881, announcing the shipment of the collection, 

 he makes the following statement : — 



" I regret that I have had to hurry greatly over the 

 descriptions. You will probably observe that they are 

 nothing more than dates of pupation, &c., from No. XXX, or 

 thereabouts, to the end. I found the time was getting so 

 short that I should not have finished them at all if I had 

 written each as fully as I did at first. The present series 



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