PREFACE. 
VII 
different misconstructions to the utmost extent. At international congresses it has been suggested, as a way out of 
the maze, that reliable and comprehensive catalogues, as they come out, be appointed to regulate questions 
of nomenclature — then voices have been heard demanding courts of arbitration, commissioners to pronounce 
irrevocable decisions etc. etc. At that time, and still more so today, it was quite impossible to form any idea 
as to how the questions of nomenclature would find an agreement; today I think it is just as improbable as 
I did when I finished the earlier volumes that the hitherto existing ,.Rules of Nomenclature“ will ever be 
universally accepted. 
For these reasons I had to leave it to the authors of this work to carry out the rules as far as they 
wished. Any resistance on the part of the editor to the ideas of the authors with regard to nomenclature would 
have been useless: it would have spoilt their pleasure in working without leading to an agreement. 
The habit favoured nowadays by many people, of noting every insignificant variation from the type, 
and slight differences in the colour and marking, was exhaustively considered by the authors. The editor 
thought it best not to interfere with eminent scientific specialists in this respect. The cancellation of any names 
already given would, in order to avoid its being regarded as an unjust arbitrary action, have caused circum¬ 
stantial argument, whereby the disposable space would have been by far exceeded. It was therefore decided 
to leave the matter in the hands of the monographers. 
The plates of the 9th volume, like those of the others, and particularly those of the Palearctic section, 
are not meant to be works of art, for the principal intention of the entire work is that it should be serviceable 
and cheap. The chromoiithographic printing firm of Werner & Winter, where nearly all the plates were 
produced, has proved in other works (e. g. Saalmuller, ,,Lepidoptera of Madagascar 11 ) that, if few but costly 
plates are to be offered, it can supply the very best extant illustrations of insects. But to make purchase possible 
by libraries, universities and high-schools as well as those collectors who could otherwise not afford to buy 
the ,,Macrolepidoptera“, cheaper methods had to be chosen, so that it was no more possible to bring into 
exact prominence an insignificant fineness such as of the hair or the scales etc. We had often to renounce the 
idea of attaining a record in the production of details that were not absolutely necessary for the clearness and 
utility of the illustrations, so as to be able to increase the number of figures to such an extent as has hitherto 
not been reached. We also claim a record in the cheapness of the 9th volume, since 5000 coloured illustrations, 
together with 1100 pages of text have probably never been supplied at a lower price. 
Considering this great number of plates, nobody will be disappointed that they are not all of the best 
quality. The great number of letters addressed to the editor during the long period of composition of the work 
acknowledge its purpose, and their writers are in general satisfied; we have not aspired higher than this: the 
,,Macrolepidoptera'‘ is a work which is intended to be universally distributed and frequently used, and not 
one to be glorified as an expensive, splendid book, accessible only to the few. 
In choosing specimens to be illustrated, we have preferred those that had not yet been figured in the 
larger works by Felder, Moore, Semper etc., but those who have not these works at hand can easily find 
their way about by the aid of the text which points out the various differences. 
One great drawback must be mentioned here: the numerous disagreements between the names on the 
plates and the references to the illustrations in the text. This was chiefly caused by the fact that, after the 
plates had been completed, the forms here illustrated were detached by the author as new subordinate forms, 
from the originally annotated ones, under whose names they had been classed. It was then of course impossible 
to alter the original names of the figures on the plates, as the latter had been produced long before. Some of 
these differences might perhaps have been avoided if the names on the plates had been replaced by numbers. 
But in other works where this has been done, it has taken up so much time and given so much work to look 
up the names according to the numbers, that I thought it was more to the reader’s interest to leave 
things as they stood, although later on several corrections should be necessary in the plates which are provided 
with exact description. 
The insertion of the names in one of the chromo plates occasioned a naturally large number of misprints, 
since artistic plates cannot be corrected in the same way as set type in letters. We hope that these misprints 
