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OuR object in the present undertaking is to incorporate in 
one Volume octavo a Catalogue of all the known Insects of 
the order Lepidoptera inhabiting Great Britain; illustrated 
throughout with figures, reduced, where necessary, to a small 
size, but with a degree of accuracy that will enable the Ento- 
mologist to fix at once upon any particular species he may 
wish to define. 
The utility of such an undertaking, if properly conducted, 
will be readily acknowledged, as we have no Work that 
figures even a quarter of the species known at present to in- 
habit this country. Any book, therefore, must become im- 
portant to the Entomologist, that will comprise an accurate 
figure of every species of insect included in the Order to 
which it belongs. 
It may be objected, that to combine so much in so small a 
space it may be necessary to reduce the figures till we lose the 
essential character. ‘This, however, has by no means been the 
case. None of the insects have been reduced to less than an 
inch, and some hundreds are of the natural size. 
With reference to the Plates, it may not be improper to re- 
mark, that they have been entirely executed by the same artist 
(Mr. W. Wood, Jun.), whose accurate figures are already be- 
fore the public in the Illustration of the Index Testaceolo- 
gicus, or Catalogue of British and Foreign Shells, which 
comprises 2780 figures of distinct species. 
No pains have been spared to make the figures perfectly 
accurate ; and to accomplish this most essential purpose, re- 
