46 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



in the same field the same butterfly, or more probably, considering the 

 ease with which the capture was made, another similarly coloured. As 

 soon as I had assured myself that the specimen was as pink as I had 

 supposed, I promised myself three or four, remembering that I had seen 

 two within half an hour, but although there were hundreds oi philodice I 

 saw no more ccesofiia that day, and more pressing business prevented me 

 from returning to the locality as I had hoped. 



ON THE CITATION OF LOCALITIES. 



BY T. D. A. COCKERELL, WEST CLIFF, CUSTER CO., COL. 



It is the custom nowadays to look down with great contempt on those 

 old authorities, who considered '* North America," or even " America," a 

 sufficiently accurate locality to give when describing a species ; but, per- 

 haps, we of the present age are not quite blameless of similar and (with 

 our means of obtaining information) less excusable carelessness in, that 

 we often think it enough to give the name of the state or region only. 

 Of late, I have been going carefully through as much of the literature of 

 North American Entomology as I could get a sight of out here in the 

 wilderness, in order to catalogue the recorded Colorado insects for the 

 Colorado Biological Association, and I have been astonished at the number 

 of new species described with the localities given indefinitely, " Colorado," 

 "Texas," and so on. Taking eighty-four species of moths at random, 

 mostly new, and recorded from Colorado of late years, I find only twenty- 

 six have the locality indicated nearer than " Colorado" — and I think this 

 is a very fair sample of the whole. Now, do these describers of species 

 ever stop to consider what " Colorado " may mean ? That it may refer 

 to any altitude from below 4,000 to over 14,000 feet, and to anywhere in an 

 area of no less than 103,948 square miles ? That "Colorado" may mean 

 snowy peaks, mountain forests or valleys, or level treeless plains, each 

 presenting a distinct fauna of its own ? Perhaps they do not stop to con. 

 sider these points, possibly they do not care, so long as the species has 

 been properly classified and named, and is henceforth recognizable in the 

 cabinet. Well, we cannot all be systematic entomologists, students of 

 geographical distribution, biologists and the rest, but, surely we may be 

 precise in touching on departments not our own, and, if we are giving 

 localities, there is no reason why they should not be sufficiently accurate 



