ABSTRACT
When Hodgson arrived in Nepal in 1820 little was known of the country’s fauna. Its abundant and colourful wildlife, still obvious today, attracted his attention and inspired him to discover and systematize the species he found. He wrote to James Prinsep, Secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, sixteen years after first arriving in Nepal ‘I have made and am making daily, the most curious discoveries’.2 The reasons for this enthusiasm are clear, but worth stating. Nepal lies almost entirely within the central part of the Himalayas, with just a narrow lowland strip to the south of the range. Nepal’s high species diversity makes the country one of the most interesting in the world for the naturalist. This richness is partly due to the very wide range in altitude in the country from the terai up to the high peaks of the Himalayas. For Hodgson this was an opportunity of which he took full advantage.
