52 Journal New York Entomological Society. [Voi. xvii. 



the reasons for their application. There is no attempt to examine into 

 any of these names to ascertain whether they have not an inherent 

 meaning that might aid in identification. At all events, such an ex- 

 amination would prove to be a pleasant side line of study. Dr. Gem- 

 minger (Gemminger and Harold, Catalogus Coleopterum) has given 

 remarkably complete analyses of names invented by Linne and all his 

 successors, but concerning the earlier names he merely states the fact 

 that they are the classic names of the insects in question. On the 

 other hand, the lexicographers have applied their best efforts in com- 

 parative philology but have been handicapped by gross ignorance of 

 entomology. 



It is a remarkable fact that the Greeks, who, as early as pre-Homeric 

 times, possessed a knowledge of the transformation from larva to 

 chrysalis and from chrysalis to imago, should have had but one name 

 for butterfly. Large, small, green, black, white or yellow — all were 

 psyche, i. e., emblematic of the resurrection. They made a distinc- 

 tion between butterfly and moth, the latter being called plialcena. 

 This word, which does not occur in Aristotle, is really applied to the 

 larva and not to the imago. For the root, compare phalangis and 

 phalanx. The earliest application of the word was to a monster that 

 arose from the sea and devastated provinces. The primitive mind 

 was prone to exaggeration. In Italian it became balcBua. When 

 ancient scholars sought the animal represented by this word, the 

 only one existing was the whale, and they jumped at a conclusion. 

 The same error occurred in Hebrew in an effort to transcribe intelli- 

 gently the adventures of Jonah. The whale has not oesophagus enough 

 to swallow a small piece of a man. The real phalcena was an imper- 

 fect prehistoric recollection of an octopus, long extinct in the Medi- 

 terranean, but which some time caught and killed many men in its 

 expansive arras. Compare />//«' A?;/^Vj, /. e., the first ten fingers of the 

 same general shape, which acting in common are effectual. The 

 phalaiLx is a body of men similarly armed and acting in unison, 

 thereby becoming more effectual than the same number of men acting 

 separately. The phahvna of classic times is a band of caterpillars 

 which devastate a field, while the same number of scattered cater- 

 pillars could do no appreciable harm. The name, then, properly 

 applies to the cutworms, or the Noctuids. It was applied by Linne 

 to moths generally. Walker adopted this conception, but Packard 

 tried to confine it to certain Geometrididc^. All of these authors 

 made mistranslations. 



