CURKENT NOTES. 243 



ELEODES — Melaneleodes — dehilis, carbonaria, ampla, obsoleta, etc. 

 Steneleodes — gigantea, longicollis, innocens, etc. 

 Hepteropkomus — veterator, etc. 

 Eleodes — obscura, acuta, suturalis, etc. 



and so on, so that Eleodes gets two entirely different classificatory 

 values in the scheme. If the name is to indicate the position of the 

 insect in relation to its nearest congeners, it is clear that the species 

 should be indicated by the name next in value above the species, e.g., 

 Melaiieleoden debilis, Eleodes obscura, etc., but to maintain the binomial 

 shibboleth, Mr. Blaisdell describes the species as Eleodes debilis, Eleodes 

 obscura, Eleodes veterator, etc., and the main value of the classification 

 is buried and unused. 



It is, of course, much to be regretted, for the sake of authors 

 themselves, that, so long as naturalists choose to insist on the 

 necessity of a binomial nomenclature — and the necessity is 

 undoubted — and so long as they choose to insist that the two 

 names of an insect shall be the generic and specific— and this is 

 equally undoubted — authors should go to the trouble of working out 

 excellent generic diagnoses of the various groups found within the 

 limits of one of the old heterogeneous lumpings called genera (the best 

 possible groupings at the time the names were created), and then drop 

 the new and clearly generic names created for the new (equally clearly 

 generic) groups, and use the old generic, and what should be the new 

 tribal, names as the generic, so that the new subdivisions, the real out- 

 come of so much labour and study, do not even appear in the names 

 applied to the species at all. 



It appears desirable that, so long as we insist on a binomial nomen- 

 clature consisting of a generic and specific name, the name next above 

 the specific should be the generic, and a scheme that creates and 

 diagnoses such names and expounds in detail the relationship of the 

 species included therein, should be put forward at its full value, and 

 the names not created and then sunk into obscurity beneath the glory 

 of the new tribal cognomen which is still forced to attempt to do its 

 old duty as a generic name. By bis methods, Mr. Blaisdell has done 

 less than justice to what appears to be an intelligent and intelligible 

 classification of the group formerly known as the genus " Eleodes." 



The South- I'Uistern Naturalist for the current year has just been 

 published. This journal, the organ of the South-Eastern Union of 

 bcientific Societies, contains a large number of excellently illustrated 

 scientific articles, including one relating entirely to entomology, " Leaf- 

 miners," a first-class paper by Mr. A, Sich. The volume can be 

 obtained from Rev. R. Ashington Bullen, " Englemoor," Heathside 

 Road, Woking. 



One of the very finest private collections of lepidoptera in Britain, 

 that of the late Mr. J. A. Clark, is shortly to come under the hammer 

 at iStevens' sale- rooms. Indeed, the sale of the first part is already 

 advertised to take place on November 2nd and 3rd. The collection 

 contains a long series of almost all our rarest and extinct British 

 species, a very large number of unique aberrations that have been 

 brought together regardless of expense during the last 40 years. It 

 will be remembered thot the types of the marvellous aberrations of 

 several species — Peronea cristana, Mimas tiliae, etc. — described by Mr. 

 Clark, have been figured in our magazine. 



We purpose shortly to bring the subject of the variation of Agriades 

 voridon and A. thetis (bellargus) under review, at one of the meetings of 



