'81 



Harry McArthur died on February 8th, after a long 

 and painful illness, that was at length found to be 

 cancer, at the age of 54. He became a member of this 

 Society in iSgo, and was well known as a professional 

 collector of great ability. He had collected in the High- 

 lands of Scotland, the Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland, as 

 well as in Kashmir and the Malay Peninsula. He almost 

 invariably made good collections, often in spite of great 

 difficulty, and was a naturalist in the true sense of the 

 term. 



Neuration of Lepidoptera. 



The subject that I have chosen for my address to you this 

 evening is the neuration of the Lepidoptera, with some 

 thoughts as to its classificatory value. As far back as 1843, 

 when Herrich-Schaffer began his great work on the 

 " Schmetterlinge von Europa," we find characters of 

 neuration freely used. The families, as they are in turn 

 separately treated, are diagnosed very fully by neuration. 

 There was, however, no scheme of treatment ; and ten years 

 later (i853),whenLederer, in the '* Vorhandlungenzoologisch- 

 botanischen Vereins in Wien," gave a paper extending to 

 more than 100 pages on the Geometridce (called here 

 GcoinetroidcE) we find a great advance. He divided the 

 Gcometroidcc into four groups, and used neurational charac- 

 ters for the many genera described. Following Lederer 

 came Heinemann in 1859, who commenced publishing his 

 " Schmetterlinge Deutschlands." On the first few pages of 

 this work there are figures of the wings of Lepidoptera, show- 

 ing the veins, with numbers running from the base towards 

 the costa. This is one of the earliest, if not actually the 

 first, definite figured schemes for numbering the veins. On 

 pages 13-15 there is an elaborate systematic key to the 

 families, based very largely on neuration. Heinemann 

 differentiated thirty-four families. Besides separating the 

 families he largely used neuration for the defining of his 

 genera. Heinemann was influenced largely by Herrich- 

 Schaffer, to whom he refers in his work. He, however, used 

 many more characters than the latter, and made a very great 

 advance, though he did not come up to the high level of 

 Lederer in his Geometrid paper, but as a comprehensive view 

 of the Lepidoptera it was far in front of Herrich-Schaifer. 

 Snellen, in his important work, " De Vlinder van Nederland," 

 commenced in 1867 and finished in 1882, gave a great 



6 



