INTRODUCTION. 



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The Lepidoptera which are catalogued and described in the 

 following pages were collected by me during a tour of service 

 of thirteen months' duration at Sierra Leone, West Africa, 

 in the years 1891-92. 



With few exceptions their habitat was the rocky peninsula 

 of Sierra Leone, which has an area of some twenty square 

 miles. It is very hilly, some of the hills rising to a height 

 of from 3000 to 4000 feet. The immediately surrounding 

 country is flat and swampy, and, so far as I had an oppor- 

 tunity of judging, is poor in Lepidoptera. Owing probably 

 to its elevation, Sierra Leone is very rich in representa- 

 tives of the genus Charaxes. In the limited time at my 

 disposal I obtained eighteen species — nineteen, including 

 Pallet [Charaxes) varanes — with both sexes in fifteen of 

 these. 



In consequence of my having lost the notes I made at 

 the time on the natural habits of the insects collected, the 

 observations which I am enabled to make must necessarily 

 be brief, fragmentary, and quoted from memory. They may 

 be divided roughly into two classes : the first comprising 

 those which have remained in aristocratic solitude, and are 

 essentially sylvan in their habits ; the second class, those 

 which seem to prefer the vicinity of man and his habitations. 

 Of this latter the more noticeable are the Zygsenidae amongst 



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