4 INTRODUCTION. 



will necessarily be deficient in many forms; and these deficiencies can be supplied by 

 general experience only. In the series I am proceeding to examine and describe, it 

 will occasionally occur that the affinities may not be apparent, that the typical forms 

 may be deficient, or indeed that my endeavours to discover them may lead me into 

 mistakes, from want of experience and more extensive means of reference than I pos- 

 sess. Such mistakes, however, I natter myself, will be gradually developed and cor- 

 rected in the progress of the work, in proportion as my acquaintance with the subject 

 increases: I am persuaded, indeed, that they will be attributed to my own inexperience, 

 or to my want of information on the subjects under discussion, rather than to any thing 

 erroneous or defective in the principles developed by Mr. Macleay, with so much acute- 

 ness and force of reasoning, in the Horae Entomologicas ; for I have no hesitation in 

 declaring my opinion, that these principles not only give correctness to our views, but 

 have a very powerful tendency to promote the interest and importance of the study of 

 natural history. Their avowed object is to direct the mind to the plan of the creation 

 or to the natural system. With the same object continually in view, it will be my 

 endeavour to determine the disposition of the subjects submitted to my examination : 

 and while I wish to exercise a spirit of candid and unprejudiced inquiry, I shall, at the 

 same time, be ready to receive advice and to attend to instruction ; and I shall more 

 especially acknowledge, with due consideration, every candid and liberal remark that 

 refers to the system, or to the order in which the subjects have been disposed. 



In conformity with the intimation expressed above, I proceed to those details 

 regarding the materials to be described in the following pages, which the favourable 

 notice in the Preface to the Annulosa Javanica has in some measure made necessary. 

 These materials consist, in the first place, of a regular series of nearly nine 

 hundred species ; and although not equally numerous in the different tribes, and by 

 no means complete in any of them, yet I am inclined to hope, that in the aggregate 

 they present a fair sample of the Lepidopterous productions of the island of Java. 

 In the second place, these materials consist of a series of drawings, representing the 

 metamorphosis of a considerable number of the species, accompanied with the per- 

 fect insects and chrysalides appertaining individually to the subjects delineated, 

 and with details concerning their food, number, and season. The former was made 

 at distant periods of time, and in very different parts of the island ; the latter was 

 procured, almost exclusively, in the two years immediately preceding the year of my 

 departure from Java, when I was settled in a fixed residence in the interior. 



Mr. Macleay has already noticed the occasion of my early attention to insects- 

 and that I was, almost imperceptibly, led to the collection of these beautiful and in- 

 teresting animals during my botanical excursions. My first collections were hastily 

 made and imperfectly preserved : they were little more than preparatory attempts, 



which 



