44 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Such, then, is the history of this now celebrated sheet, printed in 1806 

 by Hiibner as a Sketch, or rough draft, for his own use and for the 

 examination of some learned persons, expressly stated by him to have 

 been subject to their approval before even he himself would embrace it, 

 never known to have been approved by any one, never claimed to have 

 been more than a " provisional sketch " or draft of the book which in 

 18 1 6 was published as the Verzeichniss, and which differs materially from 

 the draft, as would any completed and published book or paper from the 

 original draft of same, discovered by Mr. Scudder seventy years after it 

 was printed and nearly as many after it had been forgotten, and pro- 

 claimed by him as an authority in nomenclature, not only over the 

 Verzeichniss, which is its other self, but over all works of Hiibner, and 

 all works of all authors since 1806, superseding — wiping out as with a 

 sponge — the labors of three generations of Entomologists. And plainly, 

 if this little Sketch can claim of right such prodigious distinction, the 

 nomenclature of every department of Natural Science is at the mercy of 

 any leaf or printed slip which may hereafter be discovered in the attics 

 or the junk-shops of the civilized world. It becomes us therefore to 

 scrutinize this sheet closely. 



Mr. Scudder relies upon the mention of the Tentamen in the Ver- 

 zeichniss, and upon a reference to what is understood to be the Tentamen 

 in the preface to the Lepid. Zutraege, but in which the name or the title 

 does not appear ; also to a reference by Ochsenheimer, and later by Dr. 

 Hagen in the Libliotheca Entomologica, 1862, as evidence that it was 

 known to Entomologists for years as an existing work, and by implication 

 that it was recognized as a work having authority. 



Hiibners own references, whether direct or indirect, proved nothing, 

 and as to that in the Biblioth. Ent, Dr. Hagen informs me that when he 

 mentioned the Tentamen in that work, he had never seen it, and knew 

 it only from Ochsenheimer's mention, and now that he has seen it, he 

 is explicit in his rejection of it .as having either authority or value. 



Ochsenheimer, Schmett. Eur. iv, 1816, says: " Hiibner has under the 

 title Tentamen, Sec, published on a quarto sheet a sketch of a system of 

 Lepidoptera, in which to the divisions adopted by him are given 

 generic names of unequal value. Hubner seems to be aware of this 

 himself, for he says in concluding, ' let no one suppose that this arrange- 

 ment will require no farther correction.' This sheet I saw only long after 

 the printing of my 3rd Vol. was done." This was then after t8i6, as 



