PREFACE 



The preceding volume of Hope Reports, the seventh, 

 was issued more than three years ago, in the summer of 

 1910, the preface being dated June 20. The unusual 

 length of this interval is mainly due to the time occupied in 

 rearranging the collections in consequence of the transference 

 of a large part of them to the southern half of the old 

 Radcliffe Library, and in preparing for the Second Inter- 

 national Entomological Congress, held at Oxford in August 

 191 2. Much extra work was also caused by the long and 

 painful illness and lamented death of Mr. R. Shelford, the 

 late Assistant Curator, and by difficulties of various kinds 

 which prevented his successor, Mr. R. S. Bagnall, from 

 beginning regular work here until June of the present year. 



The forty-nine octavo papers now accumulated fill two 

 volumes of a rather more convenient size and weight than 

 VI and VII. Nine other memoirs of a much larger size are 

 bound together separately, forming an Appendix to the present 

 volume. Ten papers specially concerned with the African 

 fauna occupy Volume I X, while the thirty-nine here collected, 

 as well as the nine in the Appendix, deal with the most 

 varied subjects. The memoirs in the Appendix, being of an 

 unusual size, have appeared gradually during a number of 

 years, and I have even included a single paper published in 

 1890. In the present volume, on the other hand, all except 

 two of the papers were published in the years 19 10-19 13. 



The first paper is a brief account of the life and work 

 of Robert Shelford, to whom the Hope Department and 

 the Sarawak Museum owe so much. Far stronger testi- 

 mony is borne by the record of his own fine researches 

 issued in this volume (14, 17-21) and its Appendix (1-7). 

 I have referred, in (1) p. 3, to (14) — 'Mimicry amongst the 

 Blattidae ' — as the research which probably interested him 

 more than any other of his long series of investigations on 

 the Orthoptera. 'It is a pathetic circumstance that the 



