544 A CENTURY OF PROGRESS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 



logically significant or striking variations, and most of the proposed varietal 

 names represented seasonal or dimorphic forms, or even pure aberrations, if 

 these were striking enough to make a good show in a collection. This was still 

 the almost universal practice when Holland's Butterfly Book was published 

 (1898) and is strikingly evident in the many studies of infraspecific variation 

 by Edwards. But long before, some collectors who had material from widely 

 separated localities, noticed the fact of local variation and began to view locality 

 records as something more than a mere convenient reminder of where to go for 

 more of the species. Chief among these collectors was Staudinger of Dresden, 

 who was comparing material from Mediterranean and northern Europe or blocks 

 of material from central Asia with both; even in 1861 (the Staudinger and 

 Wocke Catalogue) he was practically restricting the term "varietas" to such 

 localisms. In his 1901 catalogue (Staudinger and Eebel), this was done as 

 consistently as possible, and other types of variation were reduced to the designa- 

 tion "ab." Jordan, in England, adopted this definition, and it became rather 

 general in Europe long before it was taken seriously over here, so that when 

 the rather ambiguous terms of the International Code appeared, the official 

 interpretation of the term "subspecies" soon became practically the "varietas" 

 of Staudinger. AVorkers on the American fauna, even German workers on 

 South American material, found the distinction impractical and never adopted 

 it fully, though some tried to take advantage of the rules by calling the old 

 traditional varieties "subspecies," especially where, as usually in mimetic 

 South American types, there was a certain tendency to local restriction. This 

 shows most strikingly in Stichel's revision of the heliconian butterflies in 

 Das Tierreich (fasc. 22) ; but must be considered even in interpreting the let- 

 tered forms under the numbered species in McDunnough's Check List. The au- 

 thor has found a curious complication in Junonia, where racial limits appear to 

 be somewhat different in the two biological phases of the buck-eye. As a result, 

 before 1900 most of the infraspecific work was oriented to seasonal or genetic 

 variation or to direct response to conditions, whereas most recent work has been 

 on local variation, which can be more easily equated with the code concept of 

 "subspecies." The most intensive studies have been a long series of papers by 

 Eoger Verity on European butterflies, largely aimed at tracing the presumable 

 lines of migration of populations in past ages, and in America such studies as 

 those of Gunder and of Hovanitz on local variation in California species of 

 Melitaea and the species and near-species of Colias on both continents. Verity's 

 great works are the Rliopalocera Palaearctica : Papilionidae et Pieridae (1905- 

 1911); Le Farfalle diurne d'ltalia: Hesperides in 1940; and his study of the 

 Lycaenidae in 1943, with an amazing series of colored figures. But for the geog- 

 raphy of the Nymphalidae we must still refer to his scattered papers. He belongs 

 to the school which analyzes local variation on three levels : the race proper (which 

 he calls exerge), the subrace (his race), and of course the unnamable field form. 



sphingidae: The history of the Sphingidae for the century is short and simple, and 

 for the most part distinct from that of any other group. When the century began, the 

 authority for the United States was Harris' monograph (1839), cited above; then came 

 Morris in 1862, and Boisduval's world revision in the Suites a Buffon (1874). In 1886 

 Grote and Fernald both published reviews based on Boisduval; Grote's was the one that 

 covered North America, but my own early guide was Fernald's Sphingidae of New England. 



