BUTTERFLIES OF THE DISTEICT OF COLUMBIA 17 



that used in a list of North American Lepidoptera recently published 

 by William Barnes and Foster H. Benjamin. 



Some of the many changes in the nomenclature of the butterflies 

 occurring in the District which are included in this list are from the 

 strictly technical viewpoint thoroughly justified, while others are 

 based upon rather dubious premises. 



But whatever the status of the more or less unfamiliar names may 

 be the fact remains that radical innovations in nomenclature, whether 

 justified or not, are wholly out of place in a local list. The object 

 of a local list is to make clear the relation of the local fauna to the 

 fauna of the larger area of which the region considered is a part. 

 This can be done only if in the local list a system of nomenclature is 

 used which is in general agreement with the nomenclature employed 

 in similar lists covering other areas and in addition is generally 

 familiar to the students of North American butterflies as a whole. 



The names used herein are therefore those most commonly em- 

 ployed for the genera and species concerned both in this country and 

 elsewhere. Whether or not they are strictly correct from the stand- 

 point of a strict application of the rules of the International Code of 

 Nomenclature is of less importance than that they shall be intelligible 

 to the maximum number of the students of the Lepidoptera. 



But in most cases these names are quite correct. Prof, William T. 

 M. Forbes, of Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y,, was so very kind as 

 to pass judgment on all the names used herein, and several of them 

 are used at his suggestion, I am also much indebted to Dr. W. J. 

 Holland, director (emeritus) of the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, 

 Pa., for clearing up several dubious points. 



FAUNAL RELATIONS OF THE DISTRICT 



The District of Columbia lies across the fall line or line of 

 demarcation between the coastal plain and the rolling piedmont 

 region. But in the District the coastal plain is represented by a 

 long and relatively narrow northwesterly extension into the pied- 

 mont, which forms the lower portion of the valley of the Potomac. 



Scarcely 30 miles northwest of the District the land begins to rise 

 into the eastern ridges of the Appalachians, and from the moun- 

 tains there is a short and fairly direct connection with the District 

 down the valley of the Potomac. 



As would be expected from its proximity to the Appalachians, 

 along which many northern butterflies extend southward to south- 

 western Virginia and southern West Virginia or western North 

 Carolina, some even as far as northwestern South Carolina or north- 

 ern Georgia, the fauna of the District is distinctly northern in its 



