MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 605 



Both the above men were in excellent health at the time of being stung, and 

 both were quite certain what insect it was that had stung them. 



Case III. — A native officer of the 57th Rifles was stung a week later by 

 an insect which he did not see, but from the symptoms I think it must have 

 been the same. Almost immediately he felt faint and was brought to hospital. 

 He was cyanosed, the respirations were feeble and shallow and the pulse irre- 

 gular and weak. His face and neck became very cedematous. The tempera- 

 ture only rose to 99-2, and he was able to leave hospital in a little over an 

 hour. 



These hornets are very common here in Peshawar, and I have seen several 

 other cases of stinging by them, but without constitutional symptoms. It is 

 curious that these cases all occurred within about ten days. About the same 

 time I heard of a native being stung by a hornet and dying on the way to 

 hospital, but I cannot verify the story. 



R. C. MaoWATTERS, Capt., m.e., i.m.s. 

 Peshawar, April 1908. 



No. XXIX.— THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE LEPIDOPTERA. 



In the Field of 18th January 1908 appeared a review of Mr. South's book on 

 the Moths of the British Isles, which is described as " the most useful book for 

 the identification of specimens that has so far appeared from the press." The 

 volume in question (" First Series ") deals only with some eight or nine families. 

 It is not however with the British representatives of these that the general run 

 of amateur naturalists in India are particularly interested, but with the 

 references to the modernised classification of the whole of the Lepidoptera, 

 which is apparently dealt with in the introduction to the volume, and with the 

 radical changes that are adopted in the long standing names of well-known 

 species. 



I am in no way an expert in the classification of the section of Lepidoptera so 

 long familiar to us all as moths or Heterocera, which have been looked upon as 

 very clearly separated from butterflies or Rhopalocera, so that I do not attempt 

 to criticise. It will nevertheless, I venture to think, cause many of us some- 

 thing akin to consternation to learn that the former separation of butterflies and 

 moths according to the distinction in the antenna? no longer holds good in the 

 judgment of systematists, who now " consider that there is no well defined line 

 of separation between butterflies and moths, consequently by modern classifi- 

 cation butterflies. . . . are placed among various orders of the moths." If this 

 innovation and revolution of our formerly accepted ideas is capable of sufficient- 

 ly sound demonstration to obtain the recognised adoption of systematic lepidop- 

 terists throughout the world, the sooner the amateur dabbler in the science 

 sets about adapting himself to the new order of things the better, just as those 

 did who realised the force of Darwin's arguments that revolutionised the 



