18 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Dear Sir, — 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



San Francisco, Cal., Nov., 1873. 



Many printed pages you devote to the question of nomenclature and 

 rights of priority of generic and specific names. Allow me a small space in 

 your columns to say a word in no way personal, still from a different 

 point of view, yet with deference to the contending opinions. 



In the first place I would claim a general acknowledgement for such 

 compilers of entomological material as have in an exhaustive way at their 

 time — so far as exhaustion is possible — published the results of their 

 researches, and which compilations form entireties of certain large groups 

 of insects. I will refer to only a few, among them Burmeister, for his 

 Rhynchosa and Gymnognatha ; Gyllenhall, for his North European Cole- 

 optera ; Harold and Gemminger's Munich Catalogue of the World's 

 Coleoptera ; also, Ochsenheimer and Freitschke's work on Lepidoptera 

 of Europe, this latter one so complete with Geometrid^ and Micros. 



All these compilers have worked Avith the full understanding of the 

 value of generic names come down to them from earlier authorities, have 

 been guided by the wish of letting Linne'sand other great author's earliest 

 names stand for the typical genus, giving room at the same time where, by 

 newer discoveries, wqw genera had necessarily been created, for their 

 interpolation. The great completeness of these published compilations, 

 based upon conscientious researches, is what has created, if not all over 

 the world, at least in Europe, the use and endearment of certain generic 

 names that in my opinion might be everywhere respected, and will, I 

 hope, everywhere and for ever be adopted. I see no necessity of going 

 further back than the authority of such great compilers, even if a few 

 errors of judgment, as likely, have occurred. 



To restrict my observations to Lepidoptera only, I will here especially 

 refer to Ochsenheimer and Freitschke's work of wonderful completeness ; 

 it treats of European Lepidoptera only. The European Fauna has its 

 representatives all the world over, and it is around and between European 

 genera that the world's new species have to be ranged, whether or not the 

 formation of wqw genera becomes necessasy. Such ground work or basis 

 for a complete series of classes and genera as O. & F. have compiled 

 might, in my opinion, be followed up and their generic names without 

 omission be adhered to. Addressing American Entomologists, I would 



