Vlll PREFACE. 



he was indebted to his Continental correspondents ; it 

 was only in the two or three last years of his life that 

 he had ventured to look across the Channel for help, 

 but it was thus that he obtained the larvae of Pier Is 

 Daplidice, Vanessa Antiopa, and Sterojpes Paniscus. 

 The five species of our butterflies of which Mr. Buckler 

 never succeeded in obtaining any figures of the larvae 

 were Golias Hyale, Argynnis Latlionia, Polyommatus 

 (Lycwna) Acis and Arion i and Pamfhila comma; of 

 these, therefore, there are no figures in this volume. 



Mr. Buckler, as will be seen from the letterpress of 

 this volume, had already published in the pages of the 

 e Entomologist's Monthly Magazine ' a number of his 

 descriptions of the larvae, and these descriptions are 

 here reprinted. But of many species his observations 

 were not sufficiently complete to induce him to lay them 

 before the public, and in this case we have had recourse 

 to his Manuscript Note-Books, and possibly in some 

 cases we may have printed matter which he had no 

 wish should appear in type ; this must always be a 

 difficulty attending any posthumous publication. 



When Mr. Buckler died, after a very short illness, 

 on the 9th of January, 1884, it seemed highly desirable 

 that the labours of half a lifetime should not be lost to 

 science, and the Council of the Ray Society entered 

 into negotiations with Mr. Buckler's executor, Mr. 

 James Terry, of Emsworth (with whom he had resided 

 for many years), for the purchase of the drawings and 

 MS. notes. These negotiations were happily concluded 

 and the result is the publication of the first of a series 

 of volumes in which Mr. Buckler's figures and descrip- 

 tions will be reproduced in a collective and systematic 

 form. 



