VI PREFACE. 



He continued to labour at his new task of painting 

 the portraits of the larva? of the Tineina with unremit- 

 ting energy for about three years, but then begged to 

 be relieved of the occupation, as he found it interfered 

 seriously with his time and prevented him from keep- 

 ing any engagements he might have made with his 

 friends. 



The amount of pains and close attention he bestowed 

 on the small larva? he was figuring has caused many of 

 his portraits to be masterpieces of artistic representa- 

 tation, and had he depicted no other larvse than those 

 of the Tineina his reputation as an entomological 

 artist would have stood deservedly high. 



Before he ceased working for the ' Natural History 

 of the Tineina ' he had begun as far back as 1858 

 to figure larva? of the larger Lepidoptera for his 

 own amusement, probably at first without any very 

 definite object, but as the numbers of his figures in- 

 creased he began to take a special interest in obtaining 

 larva? which he had not previously seen, and owing to 

 the exertions which have of late years been made by 

 many observant entomologists in all parts of the country 

 to obtain deposits of eggs from any female Lepidoptera 

 they happened to capture, many species were seen in 

 the larva state for the first time, and these larva? thus ob- 

 tained were carefully figured and in many cases minutely 

 described by William Buckler. I may here mention 

 that in the work of description, Mr. Buckler was, so to 

 speak, self-taught, for living in complete retirement as 

 he did for nearly the last thirty years of his life, he had 

 little access to entomological libraries, where the records 

 of the labours of former workers afford an advanced 

 starting-point for those who can avail themselves of 



