One was Dr John Baker Boley married to Emily Lucy Boley, and the other was Dr Richard Scott Boley 

 married to Eleanor Boley. However, a mystery remains concerning the correct identity of the Mrs Boley in 

 question. Though R.S. Boley was listed early as a member of the Guernsey Society, three years after the 

 membership of Mrs Boley, it does not imply that Mrs Boley was Eleanor, the lady could have been the 

 sister-in-law, Emily Lucy. 



1901-1950 



W.A. Luff continues in Guernsey and G.B. Coney contributes from Jersey 



The beginning of the 20th century witnessed the continuation of W.A. Luffs influence and 

 leadership in the study and recording of Channel Islands Lepidoptera. In 1901 with the Annual Report of the 

 Entomological Section for the Guernsey Society now established as a regular journal for itemising 

 entomological work, Luff, as the now retiring President, followed up the report for the year 1900 with his 

 Presidential Address. This summed up the progress in the various fields of natural history (1901b: 14-18 and 

 1901c: 19-23). During 1901, besides these two items, Luff also updated the list of Alderney insects ( 1 90 1 d: 

 29-31). For the next couple of years, accounts of the Monthly Meetings and the annual Reports on the 

 Entomological Section provided many more records, including further contributions to the Alderney insects 

 (1903d: 149-151). 



During 1904 in The Entomologist, there appeared a list of Lepidoptera species collected and 

 reared in 1903 from the island of Jersey, by the Jersey entomologist G.B. Coney (1904: 127-131) who 

 resided in the parish of St. Martin. This important paper provided the first detailed account of Jersey moths 

 by a Jersey recorder. To a certain extent it followed the layout for records already provided by W.A. Luff in 

 Guernsey. Nevertheless, though dates of capture were cited for the specimens, Coney neglected to include 

 important data like localities for the specimens he had caught or seen, similarly for the larvae he had reared, 

 excluding also information on their hostplants and adult emergence dates. 



It is fair to point out at this juncture, all Channel Islands records published up to this date and for 

 many years to come, suffered from a serious lack of comprehensive data, to the point of utter austerity. The 

 idea of providing extensive information, not only in publication, but even on the individual specimen data 

 labels, was presumably absent. As far as published information was concerned, even in the Annual Reports 

 for both Guernsey and in the forthcoming ones for Jersey, detailed data was apparently sacrificed for the 

 sake of maintaining short reports. Reports or other kinds of accounts on annual collecting, would invariably 

 concentrate on fairly casual observations, with a listing of predominantly the new records for the island, the 

 rare or unusual and the migrant species. 



The year 1905 was yet another important one for publications by W.A. Luff. Continuing his policy 

 for extensive listing of Channel Islands insects, he now provided papers on The insects of Herm', 

 immediately followed by the shorter account 'The insects of Jethou' (1905a: 374-387 and 1905b: 388-390). 

 In a further important contribution entitled 'The fauna and flora of the Sarnian Islands 7 , (1905: 400-405) by 

 W.A. Luff & E.D. Marquand, there is provided a useful listing of references to papers and Annual Reports 

 for the Society. It included a detailed synopsis of the then known fauna and flora within the Bailiwick of 

 Guernsey, but omitted Sark and Brecqhou. Their listing was made by Luff in 1907, and of course the 

 Bailiwick of Jersey. The 1905 listing comprehensively covers every group of the fauna and flora, from the 

 mammals to diatoms, giving the total number of species for each group. Sarnia Was the old name for 

 Guernsey, the Sarnian group consisting of all the islands under the present day Guernsey Bailiwick. 



In the fauna and flora paper by W.A. Luff and E.D. Marquand (1905: 402) which did however 

 include Alderney, there was given the listing for the Lepidoptera. The group was divided into three 

 subgroups, viz. butterflies, moths (macrolepidoptera) and moths (microlepidoptera) and within each, 

 individual islands with their respective total number of known species. Luffs listing in 1905 was broken 

 down as follows: - 



Butterflies - Alderney, 25 sp., Guernsey, 31 sp., Herm, 17 sp., Jethou, 8 sp.: total number of species 34. 

 Macrolepidoptera - Alderney, 72 sp., Guernsey, 269 sp., Herm, 33 sp., Jethou, 7 sp.: total number of species 

 274. 



Microlepidoptera - Alderney, 64 sp., Guernsey, 226 sp., Herm, 27 sp., Jethou 6 sp.: total number of species 

 249. 



This gave a total listing by Luff of 557 species. A modern interpretation of these figures would show that the 

 totals given for the two groups accounting for the moths are misleading and that the figures would in reality 

 be more evenly comparable. This is due to the altered systematic classification of various families like the 

 Hepialidae, Cossidae, Sesiidae and Zygaenidae, which had customarily been grouped with the families of 

 'macros' due mainly to the size of the species and that they are reasonably well recognised and easy to 

 identify. These families are now classified with the 'micro-groups' of moths by decisions based upon studies 

 of their comparative anatomy. 



L6 



