4622 Entomological Society. 



one which will long remain an invaluable treasure to the Lepidop- 

 terist. The sterling good qualities of Haworth are, first, that he 

 described from Nature, and, secondly, that he described well : he 

 says, " My specific and detailed descriptions of every species and va- 

 riety are entirely new-wrought, and from British specimens, except in 

 a few instances, where I either had no British specimen, or where 

 they were not very good, in which cases only T have extracted the 

 description of Linneus, Fabricius or Villars, and in no instance with- 

 out a proper acknowledgment." That Haworth, working almost alone, 

 should have fallen into some errors is not only excusable, but must be 

 regarded as a necessary consequence of this comparative isolation : 

 thus it need not be concealed that in several instances he multiplied 

 species unnecessarily, w T hile in others he reduced Nature's species to 

 the rank of varieties ; but these last he distinguished by the significant 

 memorandum " Forte propria species." Of the Tineadae, the family 

 to which my observations are now exclusively directed, Haworth 

 described 286, and from that period the study of the Micro-Lepidoptera 

 appears to have received an impetus which culminated in the appear- 

 ance of Mr. Stainton's volume: the great labourers in this fruitful 

 vineyard to whose names I would particularly call your attention are 

 Mr. Stone, Mr. Bentley, Mr. Chant, Mr. Stephens, Mr. Edwin Shep- 

 herd, Mr. Bedell, Mr. Douglas, Mr. Samuel Stevens, Mr. Doubleday 

 and Mr. Weir ; and more recently Mr. Wing, Mr. Allis, Mr. Wilkin- 

 son, Mr. Boyd, and many others, have laboured assiduously in the 

 field : the collections of Stone, Bentley and Shepherd have stood out 

 conspicuously and prominently from the rest : that of Stone was, for 

 its day, incomparably the finest, but merged in that of Bentley, and 

 eventually in that of Shepherd, which I presume now stands as a whole 

 entirely without a rival, although perhaps equalled or surpassed in all 

 groups except the Tineadae by that of my worthy friend Doubleday : 

 still, although the labourers have been so many and so successful, two 

 of them appear to me to call for individual notice, and these are the 

 late James Francis Stephens and William Bentley, both of them dis- 

 tinguished for the extreme liberality, candour and pains-taking with 

 which they opened their collections, compared specimens, explained 

 differences, and unlocked and made patent without reserve the arcana 

 of the science ; and to the memory of Mr. Stephens a still greater 

 debt of gratitude is due, for the free use he allowed all students to 

 make of his magnificent library of entomological works. Mr. Stain- 

 ton is now in the possession of this library, and, with such an accession 

 to his own previously extensive collection of authors on Lepidoptera, 



