88 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



may be brown also. Under the- former of these stands our Papilio 

 Turnus, and under the latter the black female of same, or Glaucus. Not 

 a particle of difference between a yellow female Turnus and this black 

 Glaucus, except in the one item of color. But to suit the Hiibnerian 

 system the two must lie in distinct coitus ! No better illustration of the 

 nature and value of a coitus could be brought forward. It is black 

 cat, black fox, versus gray cat, gray fox. Are these two coitus genera or 

 sub-genera, ot are they groups / They are neither, but something radically 

 different, and which has no equivalent in modern systems and cannot be 

 expressed. I happen to have an example of female Turnus, called an 

 hermaphrodite, one side of the wings and body of which is yellow, the 

 other black, and which therefore belongs equally to two coitus ! The 

 yellow half is Jasonides, the black Euphceades. Does my example 

 therefore belong to two genera ! 



Mr. A. R. Wallace, President of the Entomological Society, London, 

 in his Anniversary Address of 22nd Jan'y, 1872, Trans. Ent. Soc, uses 

 this language : " We find Hiibner's condemnation in almost every page 

 of Kirby, in the utter want of agreement between his groups and modern 

 genera. The modern restricted genus Heliconius contains species 



belonging to seven Hiibnerian genera " (coitus), etc while in other 



cases the species comprising Hiibner's groups are divided amongst several 

 quite unrelated genera." 



An impression prevails in some quarters that, although the coitus are 

 often composed of heterogeneous materials, yet there are many excep- 

 tions, and in such cases, while the former should be rejected, the latter 

 might properly be regarded as natural groups, and accepted as true 

 genera, their names taking precedence accordingly. Mr. Kirby, in his 

 paper on the Necessity of a Reform in the Generic Nomenclature of the 

 Diurnal Lepidoptera, so speaks : " As Hitbner relied almost exclusively 

 on fades, his genera are both too numerous and too heterogeneous. His 

 genera are usually treated as manuscript" (that is, as entitled to no 

 authority on account of some intrinsic defect, as want of suitable defini- 

 tion, for example), " but unjustly as I now think, though I formerly 

 expressed a different opinion ; for on closely examining the work, ?nany 

 of his genera will be found to be natural." And Dr. A. Speyer, in his 

 paper on Eur.-Amer. Verwandtschaften, Stett. Ent. Zeit., 1875, says : 

 Only those of Hiibner's coitus arc to be regarded as scientifically established 

 7i'liich are either sufficiently characterized, or in which the satisfactory char' 

 actcrization is at least replaced by the fact that the species of the special genus 



