THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 23 



sprung up a class of authors who have devoted themselves with enthusiasm 

 to exploring ancient works and forgotten publications of all sorts, in the 

 hunt for the earliest recorded name to every species, by which to replace 

 the name or names in use. The old authors had described but a few 

 hundred species, and their descriptions were of the briefest. How brief,, 

 an average example from Linnaeus will show : — " Papilio Troilus \ wings 

 tailed, black ; fore-wings with pale marginal spots, hind wings beneath, 

 with fulvous spots;" a description applicable, perhaps, to fifty species of 

 Papilio. (This description at once misled Drury into giving the name 

 Troilus to his figure of Asterias, to which it applies equally well.) 



As new species were discovered, each of the earlier described having 

 a group of close allies, many of these descriptions were no longer capable 

 of identification, applying to numerous species as well as one. Then 

 recourse was had to tradition, or to type specimens. The former may, or 

 may not be trustworthy, and the latter is utterly untrustworthy unless the 

 type agrees with the description. Dr. Staudinger says : — "It is unfortu- 

 nately a fact that the acquirer of the Linnsean collection had the deplora- 

 ble idea of sometimes replacing damaged specimens by fresh." 



Mr. McLachlan says : — " It (this Linnsean collection,) was so mal- 

 treated by additions, destructions and misplacements of labels, as to render 

 it a matter of regret that it now exists at all. Any evidence it now 

 furnishes is only trustworthy when confirmed by the descriptions." 

 Speaking of quite a modern collection, that of Mr. J. F. Stephens, Mr* 

 Janson says : — " It not unfrequently happens that two, or in difficult 

 genera, more species are mixed up under the same specific title." 



And it is my opinion, knowing well the carelessness of collectors in 

 the matter of labelling, some even who have described many species using 

 no labels at all, but trusting to memory for identification of all their speci- 

 mens, that a type specimen, or what was offered as such, if it disagreed 

 essentially with the description, should be wholly rejected. 



Besides the brevity of the old descriptions, many are defective from 

 other causes. Often the two sexes received different names ; often 

 varieties were described as species ; often damaged and broken specimens 

 were described as if fresh, the defects being cured by imagination ; often 

 figures were made by unskilled artists, who omitted the specific charac- 

 teristics, or the figures were colored so poorly as to be incapable of 

 identification, or were copies from copies, or copies from memory, (for a 

 curious illustration of this last, see Westwood, Trans. Lond. Ent. Soc. 



