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Show 1896.] BUTTERFLIES OF THE FAMILY HESPERIIDJE. 3 precious types of Hewitson and other great naturalists, who have placed their collections in the care of the institution. In following up m y labours I have been greatly aided by the possession of a large mass of well determined Indian material, which I have been accumulating for many years past, and particularly by the possession of the Knyvett collection, for which I am indebted to the generous kindness of Mr. Andrew Carnegie, m y distinguished fellow-townsman, whose interest in all things relating to the advancement of science is well known. I have derived much assistance from the collections which I have received from Mr. William Doherty, the well-known naturahst explorer of the far East, and from the collections for which I a m indebted to Mr. L. de Niceville, of Calcutta, whose great work upon the Lepidoptera of India is a monument to his painstaking diligence and scientific acumen. I a m no less indebted to M r . Roland Trimen, the late learned Curator of the South-African Museum at Capetown, whose labours upon the fauna of extra-tropical Africa are classic, and who with the most engaging kindness has presented m e with authentically determined specimens of most of the species named by him. It is much to be washed that all authors might acquire those habits of exact observation and clear description which are possessed by this Nestor among lepidopterists, whose diagnoses of the various species contained in his last work upon the Butterflies of South Africa are so exact as almost to make the work of pictorial representation superfluous. I a m under very special obligations to the authorities of the British Natural History Museum not only for permission to freely study the collections in their possession, but for permission to have drawings made of the hitherto unpublished types of the late Mr. Hewitson and of Dr. Butler. I have to thank Dr. Karsch of the Berlin Museum, and Dr. Rogenhofer of the Imperial Museum at Vienna, for similar kindnesses. From Mons. Mabille of Paris I have received most distinguished courtesies, and I a m indebted to him for the opportunity to examine personally the types of many of his recently described species, and for the use of a number of copies of the unpublished figures of Ploetz. Ploetz made no collection of specimens during his lifetime, but contented himself with making drawings, not always very accurate, of the species which he described in the collection of others, or which he found figured in various works. These figures are in many cases our only safe clue to a knowledge of the species he named, for his descriptions are in many instances very unsatisfactory. I cannot fail in this connection to express m y indebtedness to Lieut. Watson, who compared many of the species in my collection with the types in the British Museum, and assigned them to the respective genera to which they belong in his classification, and to Dr. Butler and Mr. Herbert Druce for their generous assistance at all times freely given. Among American entomologists, I a m especially indebted to Dr. S. H . Scudder of Cambridge, who, upon the occasion of his last visit to Europe, did m e the great favour of comparing a series of drawings of the species |