Insects. 3739 



First, twenty years' additional experience on my part, with increased 

 attention to the Lepidoptera : secondly, from the circumstance that 

 the original MS. of the 4 Synonymic List' was sent to me by degrees, 

 for my opinion in regard to references, &c, and our concordance or 

 discordance adjusted accordingly, to our mutual benefit : and lastly, 

 from having obtained, at great cost, nearly all the works procurable 

 on the subject, for the purpose of testing the references &c. previously 

 given (almost wholly on the authority of Haworth, who at the time my 

 Syst. Cat. appeared, was the only person who possessed a copy of 

 Hiibner — and that an imperfect one). And I feel assured that Mr. 

 Doubleday, with his known sense of justice, will admit the truth of my 

 statement, and relieve me from the charge which has been made, of 

 having "shamefully" published his List as my Catalogue. He, as 

 well as many other of my friends — you, Mr. Editor, among the num- 

 ber — was fully aware that I was preparing a corrected Catalogue of 

 our Lepidoptera, years before his was projected ; hence the cause of 

 my obtaining the expensive works alluded to, to enable me to carry 

 out the task which I commenced in 1832, and outlived to the end ; 

 but from circumstances could not proceed with, until 1843; when I 

 entirely remodelled the arrangement, and commenced a second Cata- 

 logue — referred to in the Address to the supplementary volume of my 

 'Illustrations,' in September, 1846 — which eventually laid the foun- 

 dation of the one published : all these MSS. (with the successive cor- 

 rections) are in my library (always, with my collections, open to the 

 free use of entomologists), and in each convincing proof can be shown 

 of the date of production. 



Mankind are too prone to reject the ladder by which they have 

 mounted ; and perhaps T am not guiltless of doing so, inasmuch as I 

 have availed myself of a few rundles added by my successors, in re- 

 turn for assistance, mostly unacknowledged, afforded by my previous 

 labours to them. In my sixteenth year (the figures of which are now 

 exactly reversed, being a sexagenarian this day — notwithstanding 

 which I have had the temerity to undertake the task of endeavouring 

 to arrange and catalogue the truly magnificent collection of Linnean 

 Phalaenae in the British Museum, probably 7000 species), I prepared 

 my first ' Catalogue of British Animals,' by which it appeals that only 

 3673 indigenous species of insects were known at that period (1808 

 — 12), including, with the (sub-) species of Haworth &c. then recog- 

 nized, 1367 Lepidoptera. Time progressed ; and although I was 

 wholly occupied during the day in business, and engaged in the even- 

 ing in preparing the twelve first volumes of the 'General Zoology' for 



