PREFACE 
Such a book as this needs an apology. It is an attempt, possibly 
a foolish one, to put into a readable form the technical diaries of a 
wandering entomologist, and to entomologists alone it appeals. The 
basis of the work is a pile of note-books containing long lists of 
specimens taken from day to day. Nothing but the favourable 
reception by brother naturalists of papers dealing in like fashion 
with some of my earlier voyages would have induced me to under¬ 
take the heavy task. Yet, even in these days of easy travel, it 
has not been the lot of many to have collected insects in every 
continent. 
I have to thank the President and Council of the Entomological 
Society of London for kind permission to reprint papers which have 
been read before that Society, and to reproduce the frontispiece and 
some of the figures in the text. My thanks are also due to the 
Editors of the Entomologist's Monthly Magazine for allowing me to 
make full use of my contributions to that Journal, now extending 
over many years. 
The original papers have been revised, and in many places 
matter has been added that is not entomological, nor even scientific, 
in the hope of lightening an otherwise monotonous narrative. 
The chief results of my observations have been gathered together 
and classified in the last chapter, and it is my fond hope that from 
the details there set in serried array some inferences of enduring 
value may be drawn. 
The constant changes of nomenclature are a source of trouble 
to the collector no less than to the systematist. I lay no claim 
to consistency of treatment. In the first chapter the names that 
I was familiar with in school-boy and undergraduate days are 
used, but to facilitate identification the name given in Mr, E. 
