PREFACE

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Thirty -six years have elapsed since the publication ofStainton ’s Manual of British Butterflies and Moths, andno complete work on the same subject has appeared inthe interval. Useful as the Manual has been, it affordsno satisfactory information on structural distinctionsexcept in the Tineina, where the author was relying onhis own observations; the nearly valueless charactersassigned to the other groups being simply copied fromother writers, and mainly from the pseudo-scientific workof Guen^e. As Darwin ’s Origin of Species , which effecteda revolution in the principles of classification, was firstpublished at the end of the same year, it is perhaps notvery creditable to British Lepidopterists that so little pro-gress should have been made meanwhile in this direction.

This work is designed to enable any student of BritishLepidoptera to identify his specimens with accuracy, andalso to acquire such general knowledge of their structureand affinities as ought to be possessed by every workerbefore proceeding to more special investigations. I hopehowever that, as an elementary guide to the classificationof the Lepidoptera , it may also prove serviceable to thosevalued correspondents in many lands who have given meso much assistance in other entomological labours.

The structural characters are in every instance drawnup from my own observations. The system of classifica-tion, though now fully published for the first time, is not