vlii 



PREFACE. 



linnieari ZoologictiJ and Entomological Societies, describing 

 or cataloguing portions of my collections ; besides twelve 

 others in various scientific periodicals, on more general 

 subjects connected with thein. 



Kearly two thousand of ray Coleoptero, and many 

 liundreds of my butterflies, have been already described 

 by various eminent naturalistEs, British and foreign ; but 

 a much lai^er number remains undescribed. Among those 

 to whom science i& most indebted for this laborious work, 

 I must name Mr. F. P. Pascoe, late President of the Ento- 

 mological Society of London, who has almost completed 

 the classification and description of my large collection of 

 T^ngicom beetles (now in his possession), comprising more 

 than a thousand species, of which at least nine hundred were 

 previously undescribed, and new to European cabinets. 



The remaining orders of insects, comprising probably 

 more than two thousand species, are in the collection of 

 Mr. William Wilson Saunders, who has caused the larger 

 portion of them to be described Tjy good entomologists. 

 The Hymenoptera alone amounted to more than nine 

 hundred species, among which were two hundred and 

 eighty diiferent kinds of ants, of which two luindred 

 were new. 



The six years* delay in publishing my travels thus 

 enables me to give, what I hope may be an interesting 

 and instructive sketch of the main results yet arrived at 

 by the study of my collections ; and as the countries 1 

 have to describe are not much visited or written about, 

 and their social and physical conditions are not liable to 

 rapid change, I believe and hope that my readers will gain 

 much more than they will lose, by not liaving read my 

 hook six years ago, and by this time perhaps forgotten all 

 about it. 



I must now say a few words on the plan of my work. 



