EDITOR'S PREFACE. 



The length of time which has elapsed before the completion of the 

 present volume needs at least explanation if not apology. It also 

 seems incumbent upon me to state exactly to what extent I am respon- 

 sible for the contents of the last half of it, and I believe both results 

 will be best attained by giving a short sketch of the circumstances 

 under which it was undertaken and carried out. 



Some ten months after the death of Mr. Tutt, I was officially 

 requested on behalf of his executors to undertake the completion of the 

 current volume, a task which I consented to carry out (solely as a 

 labour of love) on the one condition that I should not be hurried, as it 

 was onlyin the leisure of what was then a busy, and has since become 

 a much busier life, that I could find time to give to the undertaking. 

 This condition having been accepted, the author's notes were delivered 

 into my keeping in four large envelopes, and on opening them I was 

 simply appalled by the task that lay before me. They were filled with 

 pieces of paper of all sorts and sizes, each containing one or more notes 

 (if more than one, generally on points quite unconnected with each 

 other except as to species) ; then there were long extracts, made by 

 Mr. Stanley Edwards, from writers in various languages ; skeletons of 

 synonymy ; a few local lists ; the beginnings of paragraphs on various 

 subjects rarely consisting of a dozen consecutive lines ; tiny slips con- 

 taining a single magazine reference, no subject being specified ; small 

 items of information in handwriting quite unknown to me, but the 

 authors of which had to be discovered so that their names might be 

 put in brackets after the extract ; in one case only a whole long para- 

 graph, — and this I am sure Mr. Tutt would not have published in its 

 present form had he lived ; only one thing complete, viz., Dr. Chapman's 

 magnificent life-history of the earlier stages olAricia medon: — all this, 

 which Mr. Tutt, with his marvellous memory, would have quickly 

 reduced to order, was to me a hopeless chaos by which I was for some 

 time simply bewildered, and with which I could at first make no pro- 

 gress worth mentioning. I felt bound to use, if possible, everything 

 which the author had written, and as this, as often as not, consisted of 

 sentences without a beginning, or without an end, or indeed without 

 either, it was necessary for me to adopt his style, his punctuation, and 

 as far as possible his mannerisms, as well as his opinions, however 

 strongly opposed to my own. Add to this the fact that I have 

 personally checked every reference at which I could possibly get, and 

 that delays, sometimes long delays, occurred between the posting of 

 MS. and the arrival of proof, and I think the length of time which it 

 has taken to complete the volume is sufficiently accounted for. 



In one point only I have departed from the author's invariable 

 custom, viz., in the omission of a British locality list for Polyommatus 

 icarus : Mr. Tutt would, I know, have given one, for parts of it existed, 

 but the delay which would have been caused in bringing out part xi., 

 the first for which I was responsible, would have been so great, in 

 consequence of the time required for compiling such a list, and its 

 utility, when made, was so problematical, that I thought it better to 



