NOVITATES ZOOLOGICAE XXIV. 1917. 61 



SUPPLEMENTAL NOTES TO MR. CHAELES OBERTHUR'S 

 FAUNE DES LEPIDOPTERES BE LA BARBARIE, WITH 

 LISTS OF THE SPECIMENS CONTAINED IN THE TRING 

 MUSEUM. 



By lord ROTHSCHILD, F.R.S., Ph.D. 



MR. CHARLES OBERTHtJR has, for many years, made a special study 

 of the lepidoptera of N.W. Africa, and all entomologists must have been 

 very pleased when he started to publish a connected account of the results of 

 his investigations. Although he published the first part of his Etudes d'Ento- 

 mologie in 1876 with his initial list of Algerian lepidoptera ; it was not till JNIarch 

 1915 in the X' Fascicule of his Etudes de Lepidopterologie Coniparee that he 

 began his complete work. In that " Fascicule " he has given us a resume of 

 his studies on the Rhopalocera and the Grypocera of Barbary. The commence- 

 ment of the Heterocera is made on pages 179-428 of "Fascicule" XII, and 

 includes the Sphingidae, Zygaenidae, Ainatidae, Heterogynnidae, Linuicodidae, 

 Notodontidae, Cnetliocampinae, Liparidae, Lasiocampidae, Lemoniidae, Saturnidae, 

 Drepanidae, and Megalopygidae. The classification is, for younger students, 

 rather perplexing, for it is neither the modern classification nor does it exactly 

 follow that of the Catalogue of Palaearctic Lepidoptera of Drs. Staudmger and 

 Rebel ; however, although not following Mr. Oberthiir's nomenclature, I have 

 arranged the species in the same order as he has, for easier reference, but this 

 does not mean that I agree with it. 



Although I would not wish ui any way to hurt the feelings of Mr. Charles 

 Oberthiir, for he has been a kind friend to me, and his services to Entomology 

 are very great, I cannot help making a few general remarks. In the present 

 work Mr. Oberthiir, as he always has done, maintains that descriptions of 

 lepidoptera without good figures are useless, and he will not recognise the validity 

 of names founded on descriptions alone. I certainly go so far as to say that 

 figures are very useful and desirable ; but a good description is often more 

 easily understood and can be identified better than an inferior figure, and who 

 is to be the judge if a figure is good, bad, or indifferent ? ! If Mr. Oberthiir's rule 

 were to be adopted, we should have to consider thousands, nay, tens of thou- 

 sands of zoological names as invalid, which are in use every day and are quite 

 understandable to the students interested. I then must draw my readers' 

 attention to the presentation of the various species by Mr. Oberthiir. We find 

 that although in Barbary the typical form of a given species may be quite 

 unknown ; yet Mr. Oberthiir heads each species with the name of the typical 

 race and only draws attention to the various local races in the text. This is 

 most confusing, especially as his Etudes have no index, an extremely regrettable 

 circumstance. Then we find that Mr. Oberthiir apparently does not under- 

 stand the modern use of trinomials, for he uses them indifferently for Subspecies 

 ( = local and geographical races), and for individual variations. JIi-. Oberthiir 

 even makes use of quadrinomials and quuiquinomials, which are absolutely 

 inadmissible under the International Rules. Accordijig to the International 



