l82 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [June, '04 



things ; Bombyx for spinners and the like ; Noctua for owlet 

 moths, etc., all his generic names being now used with family 

 terminations. 



L/inne did not, of course, express any generic type, and his 

 descriptions were as general as the species under them were 

 various. 



Following Linne, came Fabricius and, while he was } T et wri- 

 ting, Scopoli, Laspeyres, L,atreille and others. 



Each of these authors used the Linnaean names and added 

 new ones : and they differed a little in their application of the 

 terms. Now here comes the first chance for a disagreement. 

 Some authors hold that the first specific name under a genus 

 must be held to be its type and, because L/inne placed ocellata 

 at the head of his list of Sphinx, that species must be the rep- 

 resentative of that generic name forever. Other authors claim 

 that when a generic term is used, all the species under it are 

 equally representative and, unless the author has in some way 

 indicated a particular species, a subsequent student has the 

 right to divide the genus as he wishes, and may confine or 

 restrict the original term in any way that he chooses. In 

 1805, Latreille described Smerinthus and used it for L/inne's 

 first group of Sphinx, including in it ocellata. If L,atreille had 

 the right to do that, ocellata was no longer a Sphinx and could 

 not serve as the type of the genus. Here, then, we have two 

 schools at once, in one of which ocellata is a Sphinx, in the 

 other of which it is a Smerinthus. 



In 1775, Fabricius proposed the term Sesia for our tantalus 

 for the clear-winged Hetnaris, etc., and included in the term 

 also the little species now called Sesiidae in our list. For those 

 of the first-named school tantalus is and ever must be the type 

 of Sesia. 



But in 1777, Scopoli separated off stellatarum and allies as 

 MacroglossaaxidL, in 1801, L,aspeyres in a general work restricted 

 the term Sesia to tipuliformis and its allies. These changes 

 and restrictions have heretofore met with general acceptance, 

 and I must confess that personally I cannot follow Messrs. 

 Rothschild and Hartley in making the changes they adopt in 

 our nomenclature. 



