PREFACE 



Thirty -six years have elapsed since the publication of 

 Stainton's Manual of British Butterflies and, Moths, and 

 no complete work on the same subject has appeared in 

 the interval. Useful as the Manual has beeu, it affords 

 no satisfactory information on structural distinctions 

 except in the Tineina, where the author was relying on 

 his own observations ; the nearly valueless characters 

 assigned to the other groups being simply copied from 

 other writers, and mainly from the pseudo-scientific work 

 of Guenee. As Darwin's Oriijin of Species, which effected 

 a revolution in the principles of classification, was first 

 published at the end of the same year, it is perhaps not 

 very creditable to British Lepidopterists that so little pro- 

 gress should have been made meanwhile in this direction. 



This work is designed to enable any student of British 

 Lepidoptera to identify bis specimens with accuracy, and 

 also to acquire such general knowledge of their structure 

 and affinities as ought to be possessed by every worker 

 before proceeding to more special investigations. 1 hope 

 however that, as an elementary guide to the classification 

 of the lepidoptera, it may also prove serviceable to those 

 valued correspondents in many lands who have given me 

 so much assistance in other entomological labours. 



The structural characters are in every instance drawn 

 up from my own observations. The system of classifica- 

 tion, though now fully published for the first time, is not 



