Vol. Ill] Mrwf02 ii^^'f [^0* 5. 



A DECADE OF ENTOMOLOGY IN THE INDIAN MUSEUM. 



1884—1894. 

 BY E. C. COTES. 



The following summary of what has been accomplished during the 

 past ten years in the Entomological Section of the Indian Museum may 

 appropiiately find a place in Indian Museum Notes, a publication which 

 owes its origin to the economic investigations that have formed an 

 important department of the work. 



Unlike other portions <if the Indian Museum the Entomological Sec- 

 tion did not receive any large contingent of specimens from the old 

 Asiatic Society Museum. On the contrary it was not until Dr. Ander- 

 son was appointed Curator that any persistent attempt seems to have 

 been made to gather together representatives of the general insect fauna 

 of India. 



When the writer of this note first took charge of the Entomological 

 section in 1884, the collection, which had up to this period been suc- 

 cessively cared for by Messrs. Wood-Mason, Nevill, and de Niceville, 

 consisted for the most part of specimens collected in the Andaman and 

 Nicobar Islands by Mr. de RoepstorfE, in Assam by Mr. S. E. Peal and 

 in Kulu by Mr. A. G. Young. There uere also a large number of n)is- 

 cellaneous insects procured for the Museum by native collectors employed 

 in various parts of India, besides the entomological results of the 

 deputation of that enthusiastic Zoologist, Mr. Wood-Mason, at first to 

 the Andaman Islands and aftervsrards to Cachar. There was also a con- 

 siderable set of Rhynchota bequeathed to the Museum by Dr. Ferdinand 

 Stoliczka. 



By far the most valuable series belonging to any one entomological 

 group in the Museum was a fine set of butterflies, largely consisting of 

 specimens collected with his own hands by Mr. Lionel de Niceville, who 

 had for four years previous to joining the Museum been patiently work- 

 ing at the Rhopalocera of the North- West Himalayas. There were 

 also a few drawers of named Indian Coleoptera in poor preservation 

 from the old East India Company's Museum in London, and a small 

 set of named New Zealand Coleoptera furnished by Captain Broun. 



The whole series of butterflies had been named and excellently arranged 

 by Mr. de Niceville, who had also identified, as far as was possi- 

 ble in the then state of the literature of the subject, the Sphinges anp 

 the flrst few families of the Bombyces. Mr. Wood-Mason was working- 

 at the Mantidse, of which he had collected a fine series for the Museum : 

 he had also identified a number of the Phasmidse besides naming such 

 miscellaneous species beloufjing to other groups as could be determined 

 from such works as Westwood's Cabinet of Oriental Entomology, 



