8-46 THE entomologist's record. 



and stuck to it, and who either dared to correct the printer's blunder, 

 or started a system of his own, necessitating a host of new divisions 

 and subdivisions— all intensely interesting to the scientist, but 

 actually repugnant to the field naturalist and the " mere collector," 

 for whom the rose smells as sweet, whether it be called a rose or 

 redescribed as var. William- Allen-Iiichard.wni. Following Staudinger's 

 Catalogue, and the notable revisions of some palaearctic groups made 

 by Mr. H. J. Elwes — both of which make for a less complicated state of 

 things, though Staudiuger sticks to some well-known fallacies — we 

 might have hoped that Mr. Wheeler would have accepted what, for 

 want of a better word, we may call the "standard" authorities, as 

 known to the world which looks outside the covers of a British hand- 

 book. However, Mr. Wheeler prefers originality, and if it does not 

 help to bring order to the confusion of tongues, in other respects his 

 arrangement makes things no worse than they are. Two classes of 

 collectors go abroad — the man with knowledge, who has decided to 

 visit a certain locality for a certain purpose ; the casual collector, who, 

 finding himself with a butterfly-net in his possession, wants to know 

 what he has caught. Mr. Wheeler's book presupposes at least a 

 superficial knowledge of entomology, and is thus better adapted to 

 meet the requirements of the first mentioned — those who know 

 roughly what they want or have secured, but for the life of them 

 are unable to determine species among their specimens. How does 

 Mr. Wheeler assist ? He gives the prevailing colour of the genus, 

 and its distinguishing characters. From this he proceeds to the 

 individual, again condensing the features which appear to distinguish 

 it from the other members, if any, of its genus. Finally — and we 

 think this by far the most valuable departure — he details the 

 "directions of variation," and those who have wrestled with the 

 Hesperiids, the Erebias, and the Melitieas will at once understand 

 how useful these indications may be and the extent of diligent 

 observation implied by a systematic search through even so limited a 

 butterfly fauna as that inhabiting the district of the Central Alps. 

 We have applied the test to some of the obscurer and more variable 

 forms in our own cabinet. On the whole it works well, but in the 

 case of the Hesperiids, Mr. Wheeler's distinctions do not appear to be 

 sufficiently detailed. No doubt he suflers from the obscurity of the 

 older authors, whose descriptions are notoriously at variance in this 

 group, but until some one of our entomological anatomists definitely 

 separates the species after the manner of the Erebias — though it 

 must be by additional characteristics — the difficulty will remain. 

 Collectors, too, are not disposed to extend the already sufficiently 

 overcrowded variety department, and in some cases certainly, if 

 making a change, it would have been better to sink the more specific 

 var. into the vaguer ab. until the constancy of some of these departures 

 from the type has been more fully established. Meanwhile, Mr. 

 Wheeler has done W'isely to include the entire alpine system of Europe, 

 from the shores of the Mediterranean to the last outposts of the chain 

 around Vienna. The majority of collectors, no doubt, are those who 

 spend their vacations in Switzerland, but the names of the authorities 

 seem to show a tendency, even on their part, to seek fresh fields outside 

 the more limited, but no less abundant, Swiss fauna. Where to go 

 for the rarer species will be a matter easy of decision for those who 



