THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



NOTES ON BARNES , AND McDUNNOUGH'S ''CHECK 

 LIST OF LEPIDOPTERA OF BOREAL AMERICAN 



BY F. H. WOLLEY DOD. (oN ACTIVE SERVICE.) 



The authors of the new Check List have followed Sif George 

 Hampson's arrangement of families and genera, making certain 

 changes which for various reasons seemed advisable. They have 

 discarded certain of Hampson's generic names, considering that 

 compliance with Banks and Caudell's "Entomological Code" was 

 more likely to meet with general acceptance than the law of strict 

 priority, which has been most rigidly adhered to by Hampson. 

 With that exception, the changes made in generic reference and 

 in specific synonymy are based on careful study of structural 

 characters and positive identification of species. For many years 

 the authors have been making a most careful and systematic 

 ■study of types, and of figures and descriptions as well. With the 

 enormous amount of material at their disposal they have been able 

 to compare and match types exactly, and have accurate figures 

 made of others, and by studying long series from various parts of the 

 continent, have been able to trace associations which Hampson, 

 with fewer specimens available, had no opportunity of doing. 

 Whereas in Hampson's work the arrangement of the species in 

 •each genus is in tabular form, based (1) on secondary sexual 

 characters, and (2) on certain details of colour or maculation, in 

 the new list the species are, to a great extent, grouped together 

 according to their degree of apparent relationship to one another, 

 £L more scientific method from the writer's point of view, though 

 one presenting considerable difificulty in accomplishment, owing to 

 the diversity of relationship of many species to others in different 

 groups. Thus the position of a species in a large genus in the new 

 list, whilst in general denoting affinity to those placed near it, 

 does not necessarily signify nearer relationship to them than to 

 others placed apart from it. 



The careful and painstaking methods of Messrs. Barnes and 

 McDunnough have been well known to the writer for years, and, 

 as regards tTie Noctuina?, he has most carefully followed their 

 published notes, and not infrequently exchanged correspondence 

 and ideas with them, which has resulted, it is to be hoped, in mutual 



January, 1918 



