THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 49 



I have elsewhere explained myself. There are several other points in 

 Prof. Smith's paper to which I could reply, or as to which I could 

 express an adverse opinion, but I am so much gratified that a needed 

 revision of the species of Agrotis has been accomplished, that my own 

 justification or the vindication of my priority in particular instances, 

 becomes a matter of little moment. Any errors it may contain will no 

 doubt.be rectified in the future, and in the meantime we have in it a 

 valuable repository of our knowledge of the North American species of 

 Agrotis. 



ON THE POSITION OF LIMENITIS PROSEP.PINA, EDW. 



BY W. H. EDWARDS, COALBURGH, WEST VA. 



Mr. Scudder, in Butt. N. E., argues at length in favor of considering 

 Proserpina as neither more or less than a hybrid between L. Arthemis 

 and L. Ursula (called Astyanax^). I differ from him, holding Proserpina 

 to be a dimorphic form of Arthemis, just as Papilio Giaucus is a dimor- 

 phic form of P. Turnus. 



*Astyanax is one of the resurrected names which I, with many entomologists, hold 

 to be objectionable and not to be adopted to the exclusion of names long in use and 

 familiar, repeatedly treated of and figured in books. In the words of the late B. D. 

 Walsh, one might as well "tell New Yorkers to call their city New Amsterdam, or the 

 English to have their letters addressed to Londinium, because these were the original 

 names." Fabricius, in 1775, named the species Anlyanax. In 1793 he renamed it 

 Ursula, for the following reas n : it then stood in the genus Papilio, in which also stood 

 another species by name of Astyaimx. He theref re changed the first of these to Uisula, 

 and by this name the species has been known to this day — almost iOO years It is so 

 figured by Abbott and S^nith, 1797, and by Boisduval and Leconte, 1835. That Fabricius 

 was right in changing the name to avoid a duplicate in the same genus is undoubted, 

 and although the second Astyanax has since been found to be the female of something 

 else, there is no reason for now dis'urbing Ursula. It was a common practice with the 

 early naturalists, and especially with Linnaeus, to change a name given for another, 

 and the change was accept d by their contemporaries In some cases we can to-day see 

 the reason ; in others we caimot, but that there vs'as a sufficient reason at the time is not 

 to be questioned. There was no ' priority rule " at that day. To deny that Linnaeus 

 had the right to change one of his own names if he saw fit is a piece of impertinence. 

 No rule of the kind spoken of was ever ad'ptcd till r^'42, and that could properly have 

 no retroactive effect. The resurrection of obsolete names has been the greatest possible 

 nuisance during the last 20 years or since the publication of Kirby's Catalogue. Two 

 years after ihe appearance of this Catalogue in 1872 1st July, as appears by the 

 Trans Ent. Soc.,L)ndin the following circular, add res-ed to entomologists, v\ as laid 

 bef re the S "-iety, with signatuies of most of the leading British entomologists ap- 

 pended : — ' En I nMOLoGiCAi. NnM Nri.A'll'Ki':, — The undersigned considering the 

 confusion with which enti nuilogical nonKnclatine is thiLaieiied (and from wliich it is 

 already to no small extent suffering) by the reinstatement of forgotten names to supersede. 



