"The idea of a work for the identification of all the known Macrolepidoptera originated during an excursion which the editor made in Australia in the company of the late William McLeay. The suggestion put forward by this naturalist found further support in the following year in a consultation with Emilio A. Goeldi, the then director of the Zoological Museum at Rio de Janeiro, which induced me to enter into communication with Dr. O. Staudinger in order to confer with him about the feasibility of an extension, suiting the requirements of all collectors in foreign countries, of his work on Exotic Lepidoptera, which was in the course of publication.
