PREFACE. rii 



Fndia of species common throughout Europe, and the fallacy 

 of describing, without due investigation, new species from 

 this district, as has not infrequently been done ; specimens 

 of ICHNEUMONID^E from Simla and Darjiling very often 

 agree exactly with those captured in my Suffolk garden ! 

 At a meeting of the Entomological Society of London on 

 (jth April, 1874, Frederick Smith read a paper on the 

 ICHNEUMONID^E of Japan, and remarked " that, in his 

 opinion, many of them represented well-known European 

 species, although apparently distinct " ; and I have recently 

 had the opportunity of showing that certain Japanese 

 Ichneumons are identical with British species (Entom. 

 1910, p. 11). On the other hand, at least one common 

 species, occurring from Bengal to Ceylon, has been also 

 found in Queensland. Roughly speaking, south - east 

 India tends to the Malay and north-west India to the 

 European fauna ; the intermediate overlapping is of 

 unusual interest. 



It were well to remind hasty describers of the truth enun- 

 ciated by Agassiz, when he said, "The facility with which, 

 in a new country, unknown animals can be described, and 

 notoriety thus readily obtained, is a strong incentive to go 

 on with descriptive work ; but it should not be forgotten 

 that the true purpose of systematic work must be to increase 

 our knowledge of the relationship of animals of any special 

 group already known, and serve in some way as a con- 

 necting link in the chain of the various branches of zoology. 

 Working in this spirit, systematic zoology helps us in our 

 attempts to understand the laws of Nature ; these must 

 remain unintelligible to him who is busy with naming and 

 classifying materials, reducing his science to an art, merely 

 accumulating facts to be stored in museums, forming, as it 

 were, a library of nature " (' American Naturalist,' Aug. 

 1871). 



In the present volume I have treated of only three of the 



