204 J. A. LINTNER. 



species under consideration, fail to determine to which of the two the 

 disputed name may pertain, an additional consideration will serve to 

 show that it cannot be applied to nmhrosa, unless we consent to set 

 aside Fabricius' description as of no determinative value. He says of 

 it, "wings, t-Biiled, fulvous, spotted with black." This cannot possibly 

 be made to cover umhrosa, in which the anterior wings only are ful- 

 vous, while the posterior ones are hlacJc. We revere the honored 

 name of Fabricius and freely recognise the debt we owe him for his 

 untiring, life-long entomological researches, and the voluminous records 

 of his labors left us. Would it not, therefore, be most unkind to 

 charge upon him the inexcusable blunder o^ wntxn^ fulvous, where it 

 should have been hloch? And if, as the result of inaccurate diagnoses 

 and erroneous reference on his part, another of his species requires to 

 be re-named, might not the bestowal of his name upon it, in the errors 

 which it commemorates, be regarded as ironical rather than compli- 

 mentary? It cannot be urged that the extreme brevity of his descrip- 

 tions — rarely equaling and never exceeding three lines — prevented the 

 distinction being made between the anterior and posterior wings, for 

 in a volume before me, I fiud in his descriptions " anticis" and " pos- 

 ticis" occurring, as often as the discrimination seems necessary. 



Unable to discover, upon a careful review of former examinations, 

 and a full consideration of Mr. Edwards' paper, any good reason for 

 the belief that Fabricius or any other author had described umhrosa, 

 it is with regret that I find myself compelled to difi"er from the deter- 

 minations of one, whose studies, specially directed for years to our 

 Diuruals, have eminently qualified him for the solution of questions of 

 doubtful synonymy, and to whom we are indebted, as the fruit of such 

 studies, for a delineation of "American Butterflies" so beautiful and 

 faithful, as to win for the author from a distinguished source, the ap- 

 pellation of " the Audubon of Butterflies." From such authority, it 

 may be deemed presumptuous in me to appeal. 



N. Y. State Museum of Nat. Eist., November, 1870. 



