NOTE IN ANSWER TO OBSERVATIONS. 171 



characters described by the author of a species than that author him- 

 self, SO that I cannot conceive why, when the specimen from which he 

 drew his first description is no more available, another speciiiien in 

 existence named by him should not be accepted as the type of that 

 species, if no reason to the contrary arises. When an author gives a 

 description which can apply to two species, and leaves no specimen of 

 it or, on the contrary, leaves specimens of the two species labelled by 

 himself with the same name, I quite agree that the first subsequent 

 naturalist, who revises the species, has a right to restrict it to the one 

 he chooses. But Linneus has never done so in a single instance. In 

 the few cases of composite species one insect alone bears his label, the 

 other, or others, having evidently only been put in to show what he 

 considered to be varieties, and being very often set so as to display the 

 underside ; therefore there is never any question as to which he meant 

 io be the type. 



My vieAV on this point is that we should not restrict ourselves to 

 accept as irrevocably consecrated only what has passed through the 

 printer's press, and that documentary evidence of facts, such as those 

 yielded by the Linnean collection, should be recognised as having more 

 weight in the balance than the views of subsequent writers, which are 

 based only on data furnished by literature. They were excellent up to 

 the present day in the particular case of most Linnean lepidoptera, 

 but we should not hesitate to correct them now that more has been 

 added to our l^nowledge. 



As regards for instance the ApatHrae, quoted by Dr. Jordan, 

 Linneus having actually left us specimens of two varieties of a single 

 species labelled by himself, why should we apply his name to another 

 species ? 



I fail to see why we should argue that the distinctive character of 

 the existing Linnean specimens must necessarily have been absent in 

 the insect he used for his description on the ground that he did not 

 mention it ; his descriptions are far from being exhaustive enough for 

 us to draw conclusions from negative evidence ; the eye-spot on the 

 forewing is not a striking feature, and, as Linneus was not acquainted 

 with the allied species, in which it is absent, he had no reason to 

 mention it particularly. 



As regards the name podalirins, I frankly own that the argument 

 of its having been created for Rosel's excellent figure seems sufficient 

 to maintain it, annulling the subsequent description in which Linneus 

 erroneously applied the same name to another species. It must, 

 however, be emphasized that this conclusion can only be applied to 

 this case, in which no description is given, as it would be extremely 

 dangerous to make it a general rule to refer to Linneus's quotations 

 of figures by previous authors with a view to clearing doubts arising 

 from his own descriptions ; the paragraph on herniione in which he 

 quotes good figures of SatijyHs circe and tidia and the one on virf/aiireae 

 in which he quotes figures of hi/iputhoe J and phlai'as, afibrd excellent 

 examples of blunders of this sort, which are carried on throughout the 

 Linnean literature. 



Dr. Jordan's argument on the AniijniiiK I have answered by givin^^ 

 my views on the validity of types ; suffice it to add that, as the 

 specimen in question bears a label with the name "cijdip/ie'' and not 

 adippe, Ave have a sure proof that the specimen cannot have been 



