THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 133 



As to the first, Hubner's language is that he submits his Tentameri to 

 skilled persons to be examined and pronounced upon. And this sort of 

 language cannot be fairly tortured to mean anything more than that the 

 work was experimental and tentative rather than absolute and final. 

 What otherwise is all work on this subject ? Skilled persons will use of 

 any work what seems to them best and useful, without regard to the 

 opinion of the author on his own work. That Hubner's attitude was 

 modest does not authorize us to ignore him, and should rather urge us to 

 examine with the more care what he has written. 



The true criticism of the statement that the Tentamen was not known 

 to writers of Hubner's time is more difficult, to give, nevertheless we will 

 attempt it. And first we will examine what Mr. W. H. Edwards, 

 seconded by Dr. Hagen, has to say on the subject. We quote from pp. 

 44 and 45 of the Can. Ent. their argument as follows : 



Ochsenheimer, Sclnnetfc. Eur. iv, 181G, says : " Hubner has under the title 

 Tentamen, &c. , published on a quarto sheet a sketch of a system of Lepidoptera, in 

 which to the divisions adopted by hint 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 arrangement will require no farther correction.' This shed I saw 

 only long after 'he printing of my 3rd Vol. was done." This was then after 1816, as 

 Ochsenheimer's 3rd Vol . bears date that year. Mr. Scudder has inadvertently 

 copied this as 1st Vol., 1807, instead of 3rd Vol., 181(5. So as Dr. Hagen, in a note, 

 says, " the Tentamen was not known to the chief Lepidopterologist of his day for 

 ten years or more after it was printed, though he was in intimate communication 

 with Hubner, and that he did not know it shows clearly that Hubner did not think 

 it of importance enough to be communicated to him.'' 



Now we claim that it is a mistaken criticism of the facts to implicate 

 Ochsenheimer as a party to the ignoring of the Tentamen, and that the 

 onus of this procedure falls on Treitschke, his narrower disciple, and on 

 Boisduval, who wrote of " mon genre" at Hubner's expense. And to do 

 this we have to correct Mr. Edwards' dates. The 3rd Volume of Ochsen- 

 heimer bears date 1 8 10, instead of 18 16. So that, the Tentamen being 

 issued in 1806, Dr. Hagen's ten years is reduced at once to four. 



We may admire Dr. Hagen's talent for argument, but it is wide of 

 bringing a true conclusion. The times were not favorable to a rapid 

 interchange of publications, and although this consideration may be 

 insufficient, it is not without its force applied to the four years of 1806 — 

 1 810. But in order to accept Dr. Hagen's conclusion we have to believe 

 that a man deliberately prints a new system of classification " for the 

 purpose of submitting it v to his fellow naturalists and then inexplicably 



