IV PEEFACE. 



Moth, which he not only possessed but admired, he has preferred quoting the familiar 

 Latin description written by Fabricius. Even of such copied descriptions we find very few 

 throughout his great work : in the majority of instances he makes no more allusion to 

 the caterpillar and chrysalis than as if they had no existence. It may seem presumptuous 

 in me to pen anything approaching to a criticism on so great a master of the science 

 as Haworth unquestionably was ; but although the feeling of courtesy and deference 

 to so high an authority might suggest the propriety of suppressing all allusion to the 

 omission, still the omission itself would remain ; and it would be evident that, while 

 Sepp, Hiibner, and other continental entomologists were describing or figuring the 

 caterpillars of British Lepidcptera with the most painstaking accuracy, Haworth 

 contented himself with saying that while his " descriptions of every species and variety 

 of the perfect insect were entirely new wrought and from British specimens, his 

 descriptions of larva and pupce have been principally taken from the ' Hhrfomologia 

 Systcmatica ' of Fabricius, because his own notes on those two points were not so full 

 as he could wish, and were chiefly made before he had conceived an idea of submitting 

 them to the inspection of the public eye." It thus appears that the idea of publishing 

 original descriptions of caterpillars and chrysalids had been entertained by Mr. 

 Haworth, but was advisedly abandoned : also that he had made notes of the 

 preparatory states of the Lepidoptera, but never published them. 



Subsequent British authors have adopted a very similar course, but have taken 

 some pains to import European figures and European descriptions into their 

 works. Curtis and Humphreys have given excellent copies of continental originals, 

 and Mr. Stainton has extracted brief notices of caterpillars from the works of Sepp, 

 Hiibner, Boisduval, Duponchel, Freyer, Guenee, and others ; but the difficulty of 

 associating the perfect insects with the caterpillars which produced them, has been 

 found insuperable from the extraordinary discrepancy formerly existing between our 

 own insular, and the accepted continental specific names. A familiar illustration of 

 this occurs in the instance of Limenitis Sibylla. Every English entomologist has 

 accompanied the perfect butterfly with the caterpillar of another species, simply from 

 this discrepancy of names : I could point out hundreds of similar instances, but I am 

 treading on very tender ground, and will forbear. 



Still, although I will give no recent examples of this extraordinary and apathetic 

 negligence, I may cite the opinion of an entomologist with whom I had never 

 exchanged a sentiment, but who by his own observations had arrived at conclusions 

 exactly similar to my own. He writes thus : 



" Now that entomologists are becoming more numerous in England each year, 

 and consequently the literature having the study of insects for its object is in propor- 

 tionate demand, it is, I think, a matter to be deplored that books intended for 

 instruction in, and introduction to, the study of Entomology should be most con- 

 spicuously open to the charge of carelessness, either in the writing or revision ; or, 

 where this fault cannot fairly be charged, a worse may be urged, namely, that the 

 descriptions of the caterpillars I am speaking now more particularly of the Lqti- 



