PREFACE. 



/ HpHIS book pretends to be nothing more than a collection of des- 

 JL criptions of Indian Hesperiidse which have hitherto been scattered 

 over a large number of periodicals and works which are available only 

 to the favoured few, who have good libraries at their elbow. The 

 original matter in this reprint is practically nil, and consists only of the 

 addition of a few localities to those species of which I have a personal 

 knowledge ; viz., about one-half of the total number of species described. 

 The only collections at my disposal are my own private one, and 

 that of the Madras Museum, in which latter Hesperiidae are very poorly 

 represented ; however, it is hoped that this book will be found to fill a 

 gap until the publication of Mr. de Niceville's fifth volume of " The 

 Butterflies of India, Burmah and Ceylon," an event which is hardly 

 likely to take place for some little while. 



In addition to the bare descriptions of the several species, I have 

 endeavoured to include all such notes on distribution and synonymy to 

 which I have had access, and have, as much as possible, given authorities 

 for the same. As I have copied all descriptions from every available 

 source, I trust that the original authors will have no objection, since in 

 each case the source from which the description has been obtained is 

 quoted. 



The arrangement of the genera I have followed is that of Mr. Dis- 

 tant's " Rhopalocera Malayana," which approximates very closely to that 

 adopted by Mr. Elwes in his recent list of Sikkim -Butterflies in the 

 Transactions of the Entomological Society of London for 1888. This 

 arrangement is based on the caudate prolongation or non-prolongation 

 of the posterior wings, and, though perhaps not the most natural, yet is 

 the most convenient to follow as it has been thoroughly worked out, and, 

 in a book of this scope, it would be absurd to attempt any re-arrange- 

 ment. The arrangement which I should have preferred to follow, and 

 which seems to commend itself as the most natural, is that suggested 

 by Mr. Doherty (Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for 1886) 

 which is founded on the characteristics of the eggs ; but this arrange- 

 ment has not been fully worked out, and Mr. Doherty has lately found 

 it necessary to modify his first tentative sub-divisions. 



In the case of synonymy, when there has seemed to be any doubt, I 

 have given descriptions of the two or more species considered by some 

 authorities to be identical, and have given the grounds on which they 



