viii PREFACE.
I very soon decided, that until I had done something
towards naming and describing the most important groups
in my collection, and had worked out some of the more
interesting problems of variation and geographical distribution,
of which I had had glimpses while collecting them,
I would not attempt to publish my travels. I could,
indeed, at once have printed my notes and journals,
leaving all reference to questions of natural history for a
future work; hut I felt that this would he as unsatisfactory
to myself, as it would he disappointing to my
friends, and uninstructive to the public.
Since my return, up to this date, I have published
eighteen papers, in the Transactions or Proceedings of the
Linnifian Zoological and Entomological Societies, describing
or cataloguing portions of my collections; besides twelve
others in various scientific periodicals, on more general
subjects connected with them.
Hearly two thousand of my Coleóptera, and many
hundreds of my butterflies, have been already described
by various eminent naturalists, British and foreign; hut
a much larger number remains undescribed. Among those
to whom science is most indebted for this laborious work,
PREFACE. ix
I must name Mr. F. P. Pascoe, late President of the Entomological
Society of London, who has almost completed
the classification and description of my large collection of
Longicorn beetles (now in his possession), comprising more
than a thousand species, of which at least nine hundred were
previously undescribed, and new to European cabinets.
The remaining orders of insects, comprising probably
more than two thousand species, are in the collection of
Mr. William Wilson Saunders, who has caused the larger
portion of them to he described by good entomologists.
The Hymenoptera alone amounted to more than nine
hundred species, among which were two hundred and
eighty different kinds of ants, of which two hundred
were new.
The six years’ delay in publishing my travels thus
enables me to give, what I hope may he an interesting
and instructive sketch of the main results yet arrived at
by the study of my collections; and as the countries X
have to describe are not much visited or written ahout,
and their social and physical conditions are not liable to
rapid change, I believe and hope that my readers will gain
much more than they will lose, by not having read my
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