230 THE kntomologjst's recokd. 



general colour is invariably some shade of more or less marbled yellow 

 brown. 



They live in caves or in holes in wood, etc., and shun the light ; 

 the eyes are but little reduced, hat the very long antenme and palpi 

 and cerci, point to a high development of the tactile sense. 



]). )itanii(>rata is a well-known Japanese species; other members of 

 the genus are D. nuicolor, Br., recorded from Vladivostok, Pekin, and 

 the Mulmein caverns in Tenasserim. Wiinn is uncertain whether to 

 refer his specimens to D. iiuinnorata or to D. iiniailor. Personally, I 

 refer those submitted to me by Miss Young to the former species ; 

 moreover, so much garden produce is imported now-a-days from 

 Japan, that that country seems more likely to send us unexpected 

 representatives of its fauna than Vladivostok, Pekin or Tenasserim. 



[Since writing the above I have heard further from Mr. Bloom- 

 field that the creature occurs at Relfe's Nursery Grounds, St. Leonards, 

 which is doubtless the original source of Miss Young's specimens. Mr. 

 Bloomtield has since received six more from the Nursery, where it is 

 reported to be not uncommon in the Fern House, where they now and 

 then receive plants from Japan. — M.B.] 



The Terminology of Variation. 



By Hy. ,J. turner, F.E.S. 



On page 217 of volume xxiii. of our Magazine, is a complaint 

 of the " bare, non-informational system of loose nomenclature, which 

 is gradually creeping into our entomological literature," and the 

 complaint of these "slipshod methods of writing," which "ought never 

 to have been allowed to come into our science," is here repeated. The 

 following gems are culled from recent entomological literature. Pa/)ilio 

 podaliriiis pudaliriiiK podali)'in>i, Pieris napi napi iiapi, Pieris hra&aicdi 

 brasdctr brasfiior, Kiicldoe bellezina insiilaris sardna praxox, Zyfjmia 

 carniolica app".nina calahrica interiiiedia cinntdata, and so on and so on. 

 To nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand lepidopterists these 

 names are empty strings of words with but little intelligible meaning. 

 Hurely one must urge that the indications of the relationship these 

 appellatives imply should always be inserted. Again it is urged as on 

 page 218, vol. xxiii., " Science, to be really science, admits of no 

 slovenly methods ; it must be exact, not only in its essentials, but in 

 its use of terms, which are the handles, as it Avere, of its essentials." 



Apropos of the above paragraph, is it possible to arrange a code of 

 terms which will be universally understandable ? At an early stage 

 of our study we were quite content with the term " wax.'' = varietas 

 (variety) of Linneus. Our necessity then and for many years went no 

 further. This term covered all divergence from the form''' commonly 

 recognised as the exponent of a species, until the introduction of the 

 term "ab." for aberratio (aberration). 



It had become so apparent that under the term " variety " there were 



* I retrain from using the word " type" here, as I am of opinion that Linneus 

 did not in fact stereotype one particular individual specimen as the type, an 

 opinion that is suggested and supported indirectly by the careful perusal of Mr. 

 Roger Verity's paper read before the Linnean Society, May, 1913, entitled "Revision 

 of the Linnean Types of Palasarctic Rhopalocera." 



