62 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



nored, and the description alone is the guide. We may be very sure 

 that Curtis never described a brown, semi-opaque, or a yellow-brown semi- 

 translucent insect as sub-hyaline ; nor would he have given the name of 

 black to those very different hues ; nor would brown and yellow- 

 brown insects have shown the worn and faded appearance of which he 

 speaks, and yet have been said by him to be " in good condition." To 

 reduce Crambis or yE)io to a worn and faded appearance, a pretty 

 complete abrasion of the wing-scales would have been required. It is 

 impossible that the Oberthur insect should be the type described by 

 Curtis. Moreover, Boisduval described (Eno in 1832, and if it and 

 Subhyalini, Curtis, were the same species, Qino would have the priority. 

 The history of this Oberthur specimen is this : after Curtis's death, Mr. 

 Henry Doubleday purchased the types of Curtis's Arctic butterflies, and 

 gave them as a present to M. Guenee. And my informant adds, " I 

 think it quite possible that the label may have been displaced. It is even 

 possible that Curtis did not label his types, and that Doubleday may 

 have done the work after Curtis's death, and done it incorrectly. At any 

 rate, if the supposed type does not answer to the description, it is tolerably 

 certain that the type label cannot belong to it. M. Guenee hardly touched 

 the diurnal Lepidoptera, he was essentially a student of the Heterocera. 

 You ask, Why was not the type in this case placed in the British Museum ? 

 Probably Doubleday did not attach the importance to type specimens 

 which we do now-a-days." 



I will quote here a few lines from a well-known paper of twenty years 

 ago, by the lamented W. Arnold Lewis, entitled " A Discussion of the 

 Law of Priority," 1872. On p. 23: "Now, let us see what real assist- 

 ance in the way of achieving certainty entomologists can obtain from 

 inspection of type-specimens. He who examines an author's types may 

 find them just as the author placed them, and bearing his labels. On 

 the other hand, he may find them sorted and re-arranged, without labels 

 or fresh ones. * * * j^g j-jjay find the author's labels 

 affixed to species for which they were not meant. Dr. Staudinger says : 

 ' It happens that authors after having created species afterwards mix up 

 in their collections, together with the originals, species which are very 

 near to them,' and Mr. Dawson says : ' Suppose Stephens's collection, 

 instead of coming to us direct from the hands of its compiler and owner, 

 three years ago, had become antiquated, like the Linnean ; or suppose the 



