214 Journal New York Entomological Society. [Voi.xm. 



their otherwise masterly 'Revision of the Sphingidse. ' They first 

 reject all genera that are not diagnosed ; next they reject all diagnoses 

 prior to their own (<?. g. t citing as 'type' a species which absolutely 

 contradicts the old diagnosis); why are they not logical enough to 

 end by rejecting all generic names ' prior to their own '? 



"This brings me to the last, and most important point, the de- 

 fence, by certain lepidopterists, of the illegal practice of making the 

 first species of a genus the 'type,' irrespective of historical action. 

 I know of no code which permits such a course, and am at a .loss to 

 know what right we lepidopterists have to be 'a law unto ourselves ' 

 in so vital a matter; the general zoological rules must be our guide. 

 Of course, if we are willing to trample on diagnoses and on common 

 sense, and to make prasinana the type of Tortrix and so on, the 

 method will be automatic, and therefore in a sense useful ; but if we 

 apply it reasonably — as even Sir George Hampson advocates — it is 

 no more automatic than the legal method, properly understood and 

 applied. Perhaps you have overlooked the fact that the different 

 results arrived at by different workers professing to follow the ' elimi- 

 nation ' method are mainly due to their having tried to follow the inde- 

 fensible and impossible applications of it which have unfortunately 

 stultified the results in Scudder's otherwise magnificent ' Historical 

 sketch '; i. c, they have allowed one name, independently erected, to 

 'restrict' another — whereof the second author had probably never 

 even heard ! — have forbidden an author or reviser to fix as type of 

 one genus a species which has earlier been made (or which even now 

 becomes, on their arbitrary methods) the type of another, and have 

 brought in other extraneous elements which have resulted, as Sir 

 George Hampson has so well said, in a ' reductio ad absurdum.' If 

 the history of each name were traced independently and types fixed 

 in accordance, the matter would be greatly simplified. Compare 

 Walsingham and Durrant's ' Merton Rules,' No. 44: ' He who first 

 restricts a genus under its own name limits the possible type,' etc. 

 There is nothing 'absurd' in this, quite the reverse ; for it recognizes 

 and respects an intention to revise antecedent work, and fulfils the 

 requirements of the 'British Association' and other codes. Theoreti- 

 cally, no author ought to revise nomenclature without knowing his 

 literature (of course mere faunistic lists can be ignored as they have 

 no restrictive influence); but even if, as you suggest, some reference 

 were overlooked by the monographer, it would not dislocate an entire 



