134 THK Canadian iiNxoMOLOGisT, 



the chances are against the survival of any particular cabinet insect ! It' 

 has a hundred enemies besides the possibility of accident. It is not an 

 unknown thing for the owner of a collection of insects, when a type is 

 destroyed, to attach the label to another example that seems near or 

 pretty near the original." Here, perhaps, we have an explanation of the 

 reason why, as I have pointed out in my reply to his criticism on my 

 paper on Argynnis (see Can. Ent., Vol. XXII., p. 150), I never got any 

 help from Mr. Edwards in identifying so many of his types. But we do 

 not so use our types in Europe, and there is not the slightest reason for 

 assuming, as Mr. Edwards has done on the authority of an anonymous 

 correspondent, that the type of subhyalina Curtis, is not the insect 

 described by him. It happens that there was a label in what I believe to 

 be Guene'e's handwriting to the effect that this specimen was the one 

 described by Curtis • but suppose it was not, what ground has Mr. 

 Edwards for applying the name of a species described from Arctic 

 America (?) to a species now only known to occur on the high peaks of the 

 Rocky Mountains of Alberta, and never re-found by any of the numerous 

 Aictic expeditions which have been out since Ross's time, and have 

 covered a good deal if not all the ground covered by him. 



As to my (E. Alberta, Mr. Edwards had better wait till he sees it be- 

 fore saying that it is varuna. If he cannot distinguish it from varuna 

 by the description, it only shows that either his or our description is bad, 

 and how does he know that the one sent him by Mr. Fletcher was the 

 same species ? 



As to the identification of Mr. Fletcher's supposed female of Macounii 

 taken at Morley, Alberta, I can only say that there is no question what- 

 ever of Mr. Fletcher's veracity, only, how can you tell female Macounii 

 from female nevadensis ? I referred this very point to Mr. Scudder when 

 he was at my house last year, and he looked at the specmiens and said 

 he could not say, but thought that it was just as likely to be one as the 

 other. 



Lastly, Mr. Edwards says, and I quite agree with him, that the value 

 of publications such as mine depends much on whether the author is 

 thoroughly acquainted with his subject ; and such acquaintance implies 

 considerable experience as a lepidopterist and study of the forms he 

 undertakes to speak of, etc., etc., and also an acquaintance with the be- 

 haviour, habits of flight and localities of the species, either from personal 

 observation or reliable reports of thoroughly good observers, That is 



