82 



impetus to the study of the neuration. His work from 

 beginning to end is very largely based on neurational 

 characters. He gave an admirable table of the families, and 

 his characters of the genera were diagnosed in a way 

 that had not been done before. Snellen also extended his 

 work to the exotics ; and while workers at these have almost 

 continually used neuration, workers at the Pala^arctic species 

 have very often practically ignored these valuable characters. 

 It is to Snellen we owe the really systematic use of neuration 

 for classification. Present-day workers have largely followed 

 him, and although Snellen, like his predecessors, made many 

 errors, he undoubtedly gave us the foundation of our present 

 complicated system. It is interesting to note that while 

 Heinemann gave us thirty-four families of the Lepidoptera, 

 Snellen only diagnosed twenty-five. 



After Snellen came Meyrick, who, in the " Transactions of 

 the Linnaean Society of New South Wales " (1878), pub- 

 lished the first of his many papers on the Micro-Lepidoptera 

 of Australia. This paper on the Crauibites treated these 

 small moths as they had never been treated previously, and 

 in fact all through the succeeding years of the same publi- 

 cation similar papers gave evidence of the same admirable 

 handling of the smaller insects. In 1882 we have a key to 

 the family Tortricidcc, built up almost entirely on the neura- 

 tion. In the year following he gave a similar key for the 

 CEcophoridce. In 1887 we have the first part of his revision 

 of the Australian Lepidoptera, commencing with the Sesiidce, 

 and following with the Arctiidcc, Hypsidx, Syntoniidce, and 

 ZygcEtiidcc. All these are, in turn, completely diagnosed by 

 neuration. In i8gi the revision was continued with the 

 Hydriomcnidcc of the Geomdrina : in 1893 we had the 

 Tmeidcs. 



In 1892 Hampson published the first volume of the 

 " Moths of India." There is no table of the families given, 

 or any reasons assigned why any family should have prece- 

 dence or affinity with any other. From a classificatory 

 point of view the work is disappointing. Then in 1895 

 Meyrick published his famous '" Handbook of the British 

 Lepidoptera.'" This came as a bolt from the blue to the 

 vast majority of British Lepidopterists, who had never 

 previously had any work on such lines. The work called 

 forth an enormous amount of comment, the greater part of 

 it of an unfavourable character. There was no good reason 

 for discarding the work of generations of entomologists, 

 and throwing over all the facts of life-history that had been 



