Some 18th, 19th and early 20th century biologists produced descriptions and illustrations of moths of the Family Noctuidae, the largest family of lepidoptera, depict, in some instances, for the first time, species for which we have modern photographic images and taxonomy.   It is a substantial problem to organise all the information about these species in a online database.   We hope to provide a complete database of these historic illustrations and text on this speciose group and thus provide useful examples of the problems that are involved in the accurate identification, description and naming of the species in our natural world using modern methodology to access the historic information. A World Wide Web site is available at http://bcrc.bio.umass.edu/kunkel/Moths/ to complement and help update the CD-ROM version of the database.