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Show 4 DR. W. J. HOLLAND ON THE AFRICAN [Jan. in my collection with the types in the Berlin Museum and in the Museums of Paris and London. But great as is the debt or gratitude I owe to these valued friends and colabourers, it is even exceeded by my obligations to Dr. Otto Staudinger of Dresden, who entrusted to the ocean all the types of African Hesperiidce and all the unnamed material in his vast collection, and freely sent them to me for purposes of study and comparison. For this act of great generosity I cannot sufficiently thank him. In submitting the following pages to the attentive consideration of specialists, it is with a sense of the manifold defects which must in the lapse of time be found to be contained therein. With the exercise of the utmost care, and with all the help of the learned, errors are unavoidable. In all cases where doubt attaches in my mind to a generic reference, it is indicated. Absolute certainty in this respect is not easily attained in some cases. While two-thirds of the species accredited to the African fauna are represented in my own collection, in some cases by enormously large series of specimens, and I have seen in nature probably four-fifths of the species of the Hesperiidce which have been described as coming from Africa, nevertheless in not a few cases I have been compelled to rely wholly upon illustrations and the suggestions of resemblance made by authors for an approximate location of the species. Vet, in spite of the defects which must of necessity exist in this work, I venture to express the confident belief that it will be found to mark a distinct advance in our knowledge of the subject. RHOPALOCERA. Earn. HESPEEIIDJE. Subfam. HESPERIIN^E. SARANGESA, Moore. (Hyda, Mab.; Eretis, Mab.; Sape, Mab.) The differences of a structural character between the species assigned to the genus Eretis, Mab., and Sarangesa, Moore, are so slight as in my estimation not to justify a separation, except subgenerically. The principle difference is in the waved outline of the secondaries and the relatively longer fringes in the form Eretis. * ERETIS, Mab. 1. S. DJ^ELiEL-as, Wallgr. Pterygospidea djcdcelce, Wallgr. K. S. Vet.-Akad. Handl. 1857; Lep. Rhop. Caffr. p. 54, no. 5. Nisoniades umbra, Trim. Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. (3) vol i p. 289 (1862). Nison. djcelcdce, Trim. Rhop. Afr. Austr. vol. ii. p. 311 no 204 (1866). |
