Bulletin - United States National Museum

4 U.S. NATIONAL AIUSEUM BULLETIN 257
and trying to establish distribution of certain taxa throughout tropical
Asia, one is continually confronted with this lack of data from the
Philippine region. This, in tiu-n, appeared to be in agreement \vith
paucity of material of Philippine Microlepidoptera in European
museums. It is most unfortunate that all natural history collections
in Manila were destroyed during World War II.
These circumstances led the author to a systematic search for
PhiUppine material in museums. In 1954, a trip to several museums
in the eastern United States was made, and it was in the U.S. National
Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., that the
first extensive collection of the Microlepidoptera of the Philippines
was superficially investigated. This collection formed a part of the
rich material brought together by the weU-known collector of Philippine
insects, Charles Fidler Baker, who w^as Dean of the College of
Agriculture at the University of the Philippines. Only a portion of
this material had been sent to Edward Meyrick for identification some
forty years ago. Since that time, however, the revolutionary introduction
of the use of genital characters for the taxonomy of Microlepidoptera
has been made, requiring a revision of previous work.
The presence of this important collection in the Smithsonian
Museum and my 1954 visit formed the incentive for a study project
that was made by Dr. J.F. Gates Clarke, then Chairman, Department
of Entomology, Smithsonian Institution, as senior investigator, and
the author, as junior investigator. This project, accepted by the
Smithsonian Institution, and made possible by a grant of the National
Science Foundation, came into effect in 1961 and residted in the
present sm-vey.
The author stayed at the Smithsonian U.S. National Museum
(USNM) in 1961-1962 as a research associate for the piu'pose of a
preliminary study of the collection. Dissections of genitalia were
made and descriptions or redescriptions of genera and species were
construed. This investigation was continued at the Leiden Museum
(LM) from 1962 through 1964, where study of the literature was
resinned, Snellen's and Meyrick's types were compared with the
material, and dramngs of genitalia and photographs of the wings
were made. The project also included two visits to the British
Museum (Natural History) of London, in 1963 and 1964, for study
and comparison of Walker's, Walsingham's, and Meyrick's types.
The present survey of microlepidopterous fauna of the Philippines
forms but a general outline, as it is based upon too-scanty material.
In total 138 genera, 291 species, 5 subspecies and 1 forma are recorded,
of which 19 genera, 146 species, 5 subspecies, and 1 forma are described
as new.