THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 151 



the western forms. After having repeatedly tried to find in Mr. Edwards's 

 published figures, all of which I have carefully studied, any help in separat- 

 ing these doubtful forms, I had visited and examined the collections of 

 Mr. Holland (who, I was informed, had acquired Mr. Edwards's types), of 

 the Harvard Museum ; of Messrs. H. Edwards, Strecker, Neumogen, 

 Hulst, Scudder and Dr. Behr, to all of whom my best thanks are due ; 

 after having gone through all the American and European literature and 

 museums, and written to every one from whom I hoped to learn anything, 

 and after having collected personally in Southern and Northern California 

 and the Yellowstone Park, I am told I have no claim to know anything 

 about " Argynnis," as I have seen mostly second or third rate collections. 

 (Where then are the first rate ones that I did not see ?) 



I am pleased to learn, that whatever Mr. Edwards's opinion of my 

 work may be, it is not shared by all of his countrymen, from three of the 

 most able of whom I have received flattering approvals of my attempt to 

 enable others to understand this genus, and to arrange their collections on 

 a more rational basis. Mr. Edwards implies that I pay no regard to local 

 variation, that I do not allow that locality is any help in deciding the 

 name of a species, and am generally inclined to lump everything that I 

 do not know. ^ 



Will he then see how slight a difference is sufficient in my eyes to 

 separate a local variety, as in the case of the Himalayan form of A. lathonia, 

 or a local race worthy to be called a species, such as A. inontimis, and 

 how I have tried to make these slight differences clear to my readers, as 

 in the case of A. helena 1 



Let him do the same with Chitone, Cipris, Tnoniata, Hippolyta and 

 others, and he will find me the most appreciative of his followers. 



But when he rambles on in the way he sometimes does, failing to re- 

 cognize his own species when they are sent to him for name from unex- 

 pected localities, as I am told he has done, I can only say that the fact of 

 a butterfly being confined to one station is not enough to separate it speci- 

 fically unless it has through isolation or climatic influences developed 

 some peculiarity by which it may invariably be recognized as having come 

 from that place. I do not blame him for describing such things twenty 

 years ago, but I say that now, after he has himself proved by breeding 

 the extraordinary amount of variation to which many species are subject, 

 he has no right to expect anyone at once to recognize as a species such a 



