PREFACE. 
The Paper I published last year ,On the so-called Bugonia 
of the ancients,“ in the Bollettino della Societa Entomologica 
Italiana 1893, was presented by me to that Society on the 
occasion of the 25th anniversary of its existence. In preparing 
this Essay, I kept the purpose in view to make it readable, 
and for this reason, I omitted all tedious details, although 
their introduction would perhaps have strengthened my ar- 
gument. In the present edition I enter into these details, and, 
at the same time, I improve the opportunity for correcting some 
errors that occurred in my first Paper, for answering some 
criticisms, and for introducing some new facts which have come 
to my knowledge, recently, on the same subject. 
In the main portion of my present Paper I have preserved 
the distribution, and in most cases, the wording of my previous 
Essay. But I have added a Supplement, divided into paragraphs, 
each of them discussing a separate subject, and giving the 
necessary detail of proofs, arguments, answers to objections ete. 
on questions that had been only summarily treated in the body 
of the paper. Thus the ordinary reader will have the opportu- 
nity of comparatively light reading in the first part of the 
paper, and the more serious inquirer will find the detail in the 
second. With this distribution some repetitions were unavoid- 
able, but I have found that, in discoursing on intricate subjects, 
like the one I have undertaken to unravel, repetition impresses 
the mind most effectually, and thus, becomes a useful form of 
rhetoric. For the same purpose of clearness, I have introduced 
