PREFACE. 



In presenting this volume to my brother lepidopterists, some little 

 explanation is necessary. Although it is essentially vol. viii of The 

 Natural History of the British Lepidoptera, it has been appearing for 

 a considerable time in parts as A • Natural History of the British 

 Butterflies. The real reason for publishing this volume out of its proper 

 order was threefold — (1) The large amount of material on the group 

 that had been slowly amassing during the last twenty years, and the 

 increasing difficulty of dealing with it ; (2) the fact that a really good 

 scientific work on British butterflies was an undoubted desideratum 

 among advanced workers ; and (3) the long time which must 

 necessarily elapse before the material to be dealt with in the two 

 intermediate volumes, vi and vii, can possibly be worked out and 

 prepared for publication ; volume v is being cleared up for publication 

 contemporaneously with this. It is trusted that these reasons will be 

 considered sufficient to excuse my action. 



It is exceedingly difficult to foretell the extent of detailed and 

 exhaustive treatises of this character. When one is working at a 

 group, one accumulates material from all possible sources, and such 

 detail can only be finally estimated when the printer has set it in type, 

 and one sees the actual printed matter before one. That I should 

 only be able to treat of ten species in a large volume would, two years 

 ago, have appeared to me absurd, and that an account of Rumicia 

 phlaeas would extend to 84 pages, or 10 pages more than our account 

 of Manduca atropos in vol. iv, would have been considered impossible, 

 but, as one pieces all the facts together, one finds the accounts of 

 some well-known species growing beyond all previously calculated 

 dimensions, whilst, of others, one is astonished at the necessity of 

 working out, almost de novo, the whole of the life-history, and the 

 trouble attached to this is not to be despised. The practical completion 

 of the life-histories of Chrysophanus dispar, Thymelicus acteon, Urbicola 

 comma, etc., are the result of much painstaking and careful work on 

 the part of my collaborators, and the detailed account of the world- 

 wide variation of such species as Rumicia phlaeas, Urbicola comma, 

 and Cyclopides palaemon, should bring home a recognition of the 

 importance and bearings of a knowledge of species outside the narrow 

 boundaries of our own islands. 



If, in all the preceding volumes, I have happily had to acknowledge 

 much generous help, in this my obligations have been increased 

 tenfold. As usual, to Dr. T. A. Chapman and Mr. A. W. Bacot, first 

 thanks are due, but in no smaller degree also to Mr. A. Sich, Mr. M. 

 Gillmer, and Mr. S. Edwards ; whilst no less am I indebted to 

 Mr. F. Noad Clark, Mr. A. Tonge, and Mr. Hugh Main, to whose 

 kindness I owe almost all the beautiful photographs by means 

 of which the volume is illustrated. Mr. H. Rowland-Brown, too, 

 has done yeoman service with regard to our distribution lists, 

 and there are many more whom one ought certainly to mention — 



