i6 
NATURE NOTES. 
BRITISH BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS.* 
As long ago as the spring of 1856, the late II. T. Stainton commenced the 
publication of his Manual of British Butterflies and Moths, in threepenny 
monthly numbers. It was chiefly addressed to schoolboys, and the author boldly 
printed ten thousand copies. This has remained the only available handbook of 
British Lepidoptera up to the present time ; not only on account of its great 
merits, but because it has been the only book to which entomologists could turn 
for a compendium of the smaller moths, to which Stainton always devoted his 
chief attention, but which are usually passed over in the numerous popular books 
on British butterflies and moths. Much has been done since Stainton’s Manual ; 
but although we have lately had a plethora of popular books, a students’ manual, 
brought down to the present time, and written rather for advanced students 
than for beginners, was still a desideratum, and this, Mr. Meyrick has now 
endeavoured to supply. 
Late autumn is a dead time of the year for entomologists, and we are rather 
surprised that Mr. Meyrick did not hold over his book till spring, when butterfly 
collectors, like the butterflies themselves, emerge from their winter quarters with 
renewed energy. But he probably thinks that his book will afford his readers 
enough hard reading through the winter to console them during the slack time of 
their entomological labours. 
To the advanced student Mr. Meyrick’s book will commend itself by its 
compact and business-like form, its carefully drawn-up characters of genera and 
species, its elaborate tables, and the utter absence of all “padding.” “The 
young collector ” will seek in vain for any information on collecting or preserving, 
or even any detailed observations as to habits and localities. Occasionally we read 
of a species being found “in gardens” or “in woods,” but even in the case of 
such insects as the British species of Procris, we read only: — “ /*. geryon, 
Hb. . . . England, local ; C. and S.W. Europe ; Asia Minor to Turkestan, 5, 6.” 
“ Statues, L. . . . Britain to the Clyde ; Ireland, rather local ; (infrequent in 
Scotland) ; Europe, Asia Minor to N. Persia, 6 ; ” “ P. globulariee, Hb., Kent 
to Gloucester, local ; C. and S. Europe ; Asia Minor, 6.” .Surely, in the case of 
such local species, some more definite information both as to localities, and to the 
kind of soil, &c., preferred by the insects, would have been desirable. It is true 
that enough and to spare of such information may be gleaned from popular books ; 
but it seems a pity, even in the most compressed scientific manual, to ignore the 
requirements of the field naturalist altogether. After all, much useful information 
may be obtained by field observations, even though it may be infinitely more 
interesting to strip the scales oft the wings in order to ascertain, by comparing the 
arrangement of the wing veins, how one family of butterfles and moths originated 
by evolution from another. 
The first thing that will strike any entomologist on opening the book, is the 
revolutionary classification, which will, no doubt, largely contribute to its useful- 
ness, as it will give everyone who uses it a valuable training in the use of the 
excellent index at the end. We need not say much of this, for it will, no doubt, 
be thoroughly discussed in more strictly entomological journals, but we certainly 
think that the butterflies are so distinct a group that they cannot be appropriately 
placed anywhere, except at the beginning, in any section of classification (or, if 
we reverse the arrangement, at the end) of the moths. Nevertheless, Mr. Mey- 
rick puts them in the very middle of the Lepidoptera, though the sequence of 
families is left nearly as usual, beginning with the Nymphalida (including 
Anosia) and Satyridtc and ending with the Hesperiada. They are, however, 
jrreceeded by the Lasioamfida, and followed by the Phycididit. .So far as we 
are aware the only other entomologist who has adopted a similar cla.ssification is 
Zebra wski, who in his catalogue of the Lepidoptera of Cracow, pl.ices the butter- 
flies between the Saturnuht and the Geometridee, though in one respect he differs 
* A Handbook of British I.epidoptera, by Edward Meyrick, B..-\., E.Z.S., 
F.E.S., Assistant Master at Marlborough College. (Macmillan, 1895.) Price 
10s. 6d. net. 
