THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 57 



the splitters have here the advantage from their more extended reading. 

 With them it was a greater necessity that their more numerous genera 

 should be correctly named, and they have been at pains to adopt from 

 older writers, like Hiibner. all the generic names they could legitimately 

 use under the received zoological rules of the British Association. A 

 want of comprehension of these rules which seems almost deliberate, has 

 induced Mr. Strecker to attack the term Cressonia, now in use for juglandis, 

 one of our Phalaenoid Sphinges, under the plea that it is synonymous 

 with Polyptic/uis, whereas it was originally shown that juglandis was 

 included with all the eyeless Phalaenoid Sphinges known to Hiibner, and 

 that, when it was found to differ from all of these, a different term was 

 properly proposed for it, leaving PolypticJius to be used for one or more 

 of the species included under it in the Verzeichniss. This by way of 

 illustration. 



With regard to the attack on the law of priority, or rather, its appli- 

 cation by the splitters, this much seems reasonable, that, if its application 

 defeats the end of Entomology, which is to give us exact knowledge of 

 our insects, it must be modified or abandoned. To write merely to 

 vindicate an application of any code of rules at the risk of confusing the 

 study for the furtherance of which such rules have their excuse for 

 existing, cannot be defended. If the law of priority cannot be extended 

 so as to include Hiibner, without endangering the study of Entomology, 

 it would be advisable to drop Hiibner. 



The real contest does not seem to us to be about Hiibner, although 

 Hiibner and his generic names and ideas have afforded the most popular, 

 if not the most vulnerable point of attack to the lumpers. It is rather 

 between the sets of ideas which we have described with regard to the 

 value of genera. To illustrate : The N. Am. Phalaenoid Sphinges have 

 been divided among the genera Smerinthus, Paonias, Calasymbolus, 

 Amorpha and Cressonia. Objections are made against the use of Hiibner's 

 terms as here applied. Would it be any advantage to have ignored these 

 and substituted new or different ones ? Obviously, not. These terms 

 are then as good as any others, provided they are to stand at all. And 

 now let us look without impatience at these genera. What is the question 

 which at this time is the question among naturalists. Is it not rather the 

 question of how all these different species and genera came about, rather 

 than a mere cataloguing of them for convenience sake ? And will not, 

 therefore, any system of classification which expresses more clearly the 

 inter-relationship through slight modifications of structure, be the classifi- 



