PREFACE. Vli 



to have to write it. Briefly, it is to ask you to release 

 me from the work I have undertaken for the Ray 

 Society. I find that to do it as it should be done 

 would require all my time unceasingly, summer and 

 winter, for many years. This I cannot give to it. 

 My engagements other than entomological are so 

 increasingly numerous that were I entirely to give up 

 collecting on my own account, and to devote myself to 

 the Ray Society's work alone, I could not carry it out 

 as it should be done. 



When you first asked me to undertake the work, I 

 thought that Mr. Buckler had written out most of the 

 life-histories and that merely an odd species here and 

 there had to be worked out if possible. I little dreamt 

 that nearly all the common, and many of the less 

 obtainable larvse had not been described by him. 



Had I a lot of old material by me, the position would 

 be different from what it is. Coming in while the 

 volumes are being published, and starting anew with 

 no chance of checking one year's work by repeating it 

 in the following season, can only result in the accumu- 

 lation of a mass of undigested information probably 

 full of inaccuracy and, in any case, quite unworthy of 

 the splendid series of volumes published by the 

 Society. 



The following reasons, among others, have made 

 me realise that it is not possible for me to carry out 

 the task properly : 



(1) During my absence from home, and indeed, 

 owing to pressure of work when I am there, larvse 

 often change their skins and pass a stage unobserved 

 and undescribed, when, in my opinion, all the labour 

 spent on them becomes useless, and should be repeated 



