PREFACE. 



ANY attempt to enumerate, describe, and classify the Moths 

 of so large a region as British India must, in the imperfect 

 state of our present knowledge, be very incomplete, and more 

 and better workers in this interesting branch of Natural 

 History cannot be expected to come forward until some 

 handbook is provided for them. It has been hitherto impos- 

 sible to name any but the commonest Indian Moths without 

 access to a library, which does not exist anywhere in the 

 East except at Calcutta, or to collections of species carefully 

 identified by comparison with the types, which collections do 

 not exist in the East at all; and it is hoped that the publication 

 of the Volumes, of which the present is the first, will be of 

 use to students of the subject, and aid a school of workers in 

 the field for the Heterocera such as have arisen for the Rho- 

 palocera since the publication of the first volume of Marshall 

 and de Niceville's ' Butterflies of India/ 



As no general revision of the Heterocera has been attempted 

 since GueneVs time, and as his system is very much out of 

 date, one of the most difficult parts of the present work has 

 been the scheme of classification and the correct placing of 

 the very numerous species which had been described. It is, 

 however, hoped that, by collating the systems of writers who 

 have worked at special groups, a natural scheme in accordance 



