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Show 1881.] OF AMURLAND, NORTH CHINA, A N D JAPAN. 857 The materials at hand for this purpose were the extensive collections formed by Messrs. Jonas, Pryer, and Fenton in Japan, nearly complete series of which, received through Mr. Janson, are in Mr. God-man's and my own collections. I also received from Dr. Staudinger a nearly complete series of the Amurland Butterflies collected by Christoph ; and from Askold I had a majority of the species collected by Jankowsky. In Mr. Godman's collection are also a number of rare species from Amurland. I have further consulted, as far as my time and opportunities allowed, the British-Museum and Hewitson collections. Lastly, and most important of all, I had through Dr. Staudinger's kindness an opportunity of comparing most of the doubtful Japanese forms with specimens in his unrivalled collection, which contains long series of nearly all the species known in Amur-land. I do not propose, however, to treat of these in detail, as I hope that they may be shortly monographed in a thorough and complete manner by Dr. Staudinger himself. The large number of new species which have been recently described from Japan by Mr. Butler, would no doubt lead one to suppose that the fauna of that country was an extremely peculiar one. Knowing beforehand that the birds and plants of Japan have a very close affinity with those of Eastern Asia and Europe, I was not surprised to find that many of these new species were really only varieties of well-known European insects ; and the more 1 studied them, the more convinced I became that a better knowledge of the Japanese Butterflies will confirm m y views. Many Japanese insects which at first seemed distinct, proved, on comparison with a really fine Palae-arctic collection, which unfortunately does not exist in England, to be at best local forms of them ; and the remarkable variations which exist among them tend to prove this. It is, however, as yet impossible to speak with certainty about many of these species, which have been described from single, faded, and imperfect specimens, or even in some cases from drawings ; and until the distribution, variations, and conditions of life under which these varieties are produced have been studied on the spot by a competent naturalist well acquainted with the Palsearctic Lepidoptera, any conclusions on the question must be doubtful. The time has gone by when species could be described wholesale without comparison with the allied forms in neighbouring regions ; and for this reason I venture to think that such bare descriptions as have been published in various periodicals are not calculated to advance scientific knowledge. The literature of the Lepidoptera of these countries is extremely scattered and imperfect: with the exception of Bremer's and Mene'- tries's lists of the Lepidoptera of Amurland, no extensive papers have been published; and at the time these papers were written Japanese Lepidoptera were unknown. The most important papers are as follows:- B R E M E R & G R E Y . Beitriige zur Schmetterlings-Fauna der nord-lichen China. St. Petersburg, 1853. Contains a list of species collected near Pekin by Tatarinoff |