196 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma. 

 Edited by W. T. Blanford. Butterflies.— Vol. I, By 

 Lieut. -Col. C. T. Bingham. Taylor & Francis. 



In dealing previously with some of the families of Hymeno- 

 ptera, Col. Bingham was, as were several other writers in this 

 series, more or less of a pioneer, for that order of Insecta is still 

 very incompletely represented in collections from British India. 

 In butterflies the position is reversed : not only is immense 

 material available for study, but much literature on the subject 

 has already appeared, not only relating to the confines of the 

 faunistic area included in the purview of these volumes, but also 

 of neighbouring zoological territories ; while the British Museum 

 possesses a worked and classified collection which is unrivalled. 

 In addition to these advantages, Col. Bingham has collected 

 on the spot, and has aroused the enthusiasm of quite a num- 

 ber of other field entomologists, who have aided his task by 

 the collection of specimens. Consequently we now have a 

 digest rather than a contribution, a critical summary in place of 

 the description of undescribed material, and an enumeration of 

 species (if the author will allow us to use the term), which should 

 at least, till the day arrives when their transformations shall be 

 fully studied and recorded, be regarded with some amount of 

 finality. We can therefore readily understand that the author 

 of this book must have felt a considerable responsibility, and in 

 going over the work of other writers with more limited oppor- 

 tunity, he must have frequently concluded that all that was 

 recorded as new was not invariably true, and also the reverse. 

 And this particularly applies to the great work now being 

 published by Moore, whose specific and generic propositions 

 receive little acceptance in the present volume, older views as 

 to the sequence of families have acquired considerable modifi- 

 cation, and Col. Bingham has also constructed his provisional 

 genetic tree arising from a "Hypothetical Moth Ancestor." 

 The families Nymphalidce and Nemeobidce are completed, and 

 two more volumes are estimated as necessary to conclude the 

 subject. 



Col. Bingham has discarded the use of the term " species " 

 as being tainted with " the evil connotations of pre-Darwinian 

 times," and has adopted in its place another term — "form." 



