THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 249 



Meanwhile we must express our sympathy for the " Auctores " who are 

 so constantly quoted to be as constantly corrected. Poor fellows ! They 

 did know Lepidoptera so shockingly. 



But Mr. Scudder does not seem to be content even with his own 

 handiwork. Although he has cut a slice from a genus at this end, and a 

 piece from that end, and a fragment out of the middle, and has given new 

 names to pieces and relics alike, and in spite of swapping specific names, 

 until they pass from hand to hand like soiled postal currency, he has yet 

 a mission. He is seized with a certain Adamic afflatus, and begins the 

 work afresh. Seated in his Eden he orders the Psyche phalanx to defile 

 before him, and to each insect as it comes to a salute he presents a new 

 name. Some are fairly suggestive ; some on the principle of Liuiis a non 

 lucendo ; some entirely fanciful; some singularly inapt ; all unnecessary, 

 and furnishing a still further element of confusion. Upon an erroneous 

 assumption that Datiais Archippus lives as an imago for a year and a half, 

 it is dubbed the Monarch — certainly a ruler without a subject. If, as 

 Mr. Edwards suggests, its longevity were proven, the insect might be called 

 Patriarch ; because of its wide and wandering range, we suggest that it 

 were better with the name of Pilgrim, or possibly of Tramp. As the 

 Monarch governs nobody, and Limenitis Disippus resembles him, no 

 matter how, he must be Viceroy. Because the latter is tawny, and con- 

 geners are black, they are grouped as Purples. Papilio Philetwr, which 

 Say described — and Say had an eye for color — as black with green reflec- 

 tions, is called the Blue Swallow-tail. The genus once called Argynnis is 

 broken up into several, but all receive the name Fritillaries. Diana 

 remains Diana. Idalia becomes the Regal Fritillary ; Cybele the Great 

 Spangled Fritillary ; Aphrodite the Silver-spot Fritillary ; Atlantis the 

 Mountain Silver-spot (not Fritillary) ; and Myrina is the Silver-bordered 

 Fritillary. And so on to the end of the flitting, fluttering train. 



Now, in the name of science, we seriously and earnestly protest 

 against afl this. Nearly every branch of natural history is cursed with a 

 series of trivial or common names, which having no definiteness nor 

 certainty of application, stand in the way of those which are accurate and 

 significant. Birds, fishes, reptUes, plants have different names in localities 

 not farther removed than adjacent counties, and one is always uncertain 

 as to the species which is indicated. The scheme of Linnean nomen- 

 clature was devised to remedy this evil. English Entomologists have 

 suffered their science to bear the burden of a double system of names, 



