( Ixxvi ) 



last ten or fifteen years. I have a letter from Lord Montagu, 

 in which he says that the Hessian Fly has been known on 

 his estate (Beaulieu) for many years, and that the farmers 

 designate its ravages by the term " weak-stalk." Dr. Kiley's 

 chief argument for its comparatively modern introduction 

 is based upon the impossibility that men like Kirby, 

 Curtis, and Westwood could have overlooked it ; but in 

 1856, our great economic entomologist, Curtis, then Presi- 

 dent of this Society, commenting upon Mr. Stainton's 

 announcement of the discovery, for the first time, of the 

 smaller genera of Tineina in tropical countries, expressed 

 his doubts whether Micro-Lepidoptera would be found so 

 plentiful in tropical countries as Mr. Stainton anticipated, 

 and why ? because even in the South of Europe, through 

 which, in company with Mr. Walker, he made a tour some 

 years before, although they collected diligently and sought 

 especially for Micro-Lepidoptera in places similar to those in 

 which they were plentiful in England, yet out of more than 

 six thousand specimens of insects they brought home, the 

 number of small moths was very few. Knowing the vast 

 number of South-European species that have since been 

 described by Staudinger, Zeller, Stainton, Milliere, Constant, 

 Ragonot and others, and bearing in mind also the very 

 limited amount of damage done to our crops by the Hessian 

 Fly as compared to its ravages in America, is it unreasonable 

 to believe that it may easily have been unobserved for a 

 much longer period than has been generally supposed, and 

 that Curtis himself may not improbably have overlooked 

 it ? With the amount of new material annually coming to 

 hand, it is not surprising that the difficulties to be over- 

 come in laying down the lines of a satisfactory classifi- 

 cation of the numerous families and genera of insects 

 are at present very great. In the case of Coieoptera these 

 have been more or less successfully encountered, but the 

 hard chitinous structure of the various parts of beetles has 

 afforded facilities which are not available in dealing with the 

 more fragile forms comprised in the orders of Lepidoptera 

 and Diptera, and to this, and the facility with which they are 

 collected, we may fairly attribute the large preponderance of 



