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PREFACE 



TO THE PRESENT EDITION. 



The acknowledged value of the figures contained in Drury's " Illustrations,"* the 

 extreme rarity of many of the insects figured thereui, which continue up to the present 

 day to be unique, and the scarcity of the work itself, which appears almost unknown to 

 Continental Entomologists, having induced the proprietor of the plates to republish the 

 work, I have consented to undertake the charge of bringing it forth in a form more 

 adapted to the present greatly advanced state of Entomology. How far I have succeeded 

 must be left for the candid Entomologist to decide. It is fit however that, by way of be- 

 speaking indulgence for the numerous errors into which I fear that I have, notwithstanding 

 all my care, fallen, I should mention the obstacles which have operated against my giving 

 the work that perfect style which I could have wished it to possess. Of these the 

 chief difficulty has arisen from the non-possession of the specimens which served for 

 the original illustrations, without which it may be readily conceived that it has been 

 impossible to ascertain with precision many of the more minute characters, of which the 

 present state of the science requires the investigation ; thus in many cases I have been 

 obliged to remain in ignorance of the particular structure of the antennae, trophi and leo^s 

 and the disposition of the veins of the wings, in many of the smaller species of Lepidoptera, 

 so that the precise genera may not in some instances be correctly stated ; and to many 

 I have been compelled to attach marks of interrogation for the like reason. Another 

 and equally strong obstacle has been produced ft'om the little attention paid to exotic 



" The original title of this work, Vol. I., was " Illustrations of Natural History, wherein are exhibited upwards of two hundred 

 and forty figures of Exotic Insects, according to their different genera, very few of which have hitherto been figured by any 

 author, being engraved and coloured from nature, with the greatest accuracy, and under the author's own inspection ; on fifty 

 copper-plates ; with a particular description of each Insect, interspersed with remarks and reflections on the nature and properties 

 of many of them, by D. Drury, 1770." The second volume containing upwards of two hundred and twenty figures, on fifty copper- 

 plates, appeared in 1773; and the third containing upwards of two hundred figures, also on fifty plates, was not published until 

 1782. The majority of the plates were drawn and engraved by the celebrated Moses Harris, but some of the plates in the last 

 volume were by a different hand. 



