A Revised Handbook of British Lepidoptera

Abstract

MORE than a generation has elapsed since a new and comprehensive treatise on our British butterflies and moths, on highly original lines, was submitted to the entomologists of the period by a well-known worker in the field of the Micro-Lepidoptera. The sensation caused by the daring innovations in classification and nomenclature in Mr. Meyrick's first “Handbook”—now long out-of-print—and the mixed reception accorded to the book by the leading authorities of the time, are still fresh in the memory of many of our living lepidopterists. In the words of the notice which appeared in NATURE (vol. 53, p. 265) soon after its publication: “Every one who knows our British Lepidoptera will recognise the sweeping character of the changes proposed, and how far they will ultimately be accepted no one can venture to predict at present.” The complete upsetting of all previous arrangements of this order of insects by a quasi-Linnean system of classification, and the revolutionary changes of the names in current use of so many of our most familiar species, were by no means generally welcomed or readily adopted; and in this connexion it is significant that, so far as the experience of the present writer is concerned, it is still very rarely that we meet with a public or private collection of Macro-Lepidoptera arranged on the system of the “Handbook.”

A Revised Handbook of British Lepidoptera.

By Edward Meyrick. Pp. vi + 914. (London: Watkins and Doncaster, 1928.) 18s.