INTRODUCTION. 
Little of any importance appears to have been written on the Lepidoptera 
of China and Japan prior to the year 1853, and of the species described as 
from China anterior to that date many were undoubtedly from the southern 
portion of the country and do not, therefore, fall within the scope of the 
present work. 
Considering that Europeans have resided in different parts of China for so 
many years, it is a matter of great surprise that so few of them seem to have 
devoted their attention to the Entomology of the country. The first really 
important work is that of Bremer and Grey, entitled ' Beitrage zur Schmetter- 
lings-Fauna der nordlichen China's,' published in St. Petersburg, 1853. In 
this work there is a list of the species of Lepidoptera collected by TatarinofF 
and Gaschkevitsch near Pekin, including some new to science ; a few of 
these are figured in the work quoted, and others by Menetries in ' Enume- 
ratio Corporum Animalium Musei Imp. Acad. Scient. Petropolitause,' 1855-63 
(generally quoted as " Cat. Mus. Petr."). In 1862, Felder contributed a 
valuable paper to the ' Wiener Entomologische ISIonatschrift,' entitled 
" Observationes de Lepidopteris nonnullis Chinte centralis ct Japoaise," in 
which he enumerates the species collected by Dr. Muirhead in the neighbour- 
hood of Ningpo and describes a number then new to science, several of which 
were subsequently figured in his ' Beise der Novara.' Oberthiir commenced 
to deal with the fauna of "Western and Northern China in the second part of 
his ' Etudes d'Entomologie,' which was published in the latter part of 1S76. 
d 
