SOCIETIES. 131 



had access to his collection, undertook the task, and produced a series 

 of notes on those species in Hufnagel's catalogue which needed further 

 elucidation ; he also gives descriptions of and names to some new- 

 species not mentioned by Hufnagel. Von Rottemburg's descriptions 

 are elaborate enough to remove the difficulty of identitication from 

 Hufnagel's names. They appeared in a natural history magazine 

 published at Halle during the years 1775-76-77. It is not surprising 

 that, as it was only to be found in the pages of magazines, the work 

 of these two men should have been less widely known than that of 

 some of their successors. It Avas naturally best known to the German 

 naturalists, and as we shall hereafter see, some of their names obtained 

 currency in this country at an early period. A great many of the 

 changes introduced into our nomenclature by the Entoruolo<iist Liht are 

 due to the substitution of the names given by one or other of these 

 authors for later ones. Of the thirteen changes in butterfly nomen- 

 clature, six are due to this cause. We next come to an authority, upon 

 the exact value of which opinion is divided, and which is known by the 

 name of the Vienna Catalogue, and is indicated in our lists by the 

 letters W.Y. or S.V., or by the contraction Schiif . This work was pub- 

 lished anonymously in Vienna in 1776, but it soon became known that 

 its authors were Schiffermiiller and Denis, two of the teachers or pro- 

 fessors in the Imperial College of the Theresians. Denis, who was a Jesuit 

 and was the librarian of the ( 'ollege, seems also to have been a poet. 

 Schiffermiiller, wdiom one would judge to have been the greater of the 

 two collaborateurs, afterwards filled high offices in the Church. The 

 work, which is a systematic catalogue of the lepidoptera found in the 

 neighbourhood of Vienna, is arranged in three columns. The first of 

 these contains the name of and particulars relating to larva3 ; in the 

 second, a German name is assigned to the imago, which is often to some 

 extent descriptive, as for example in the case of adonis, which is 

 called : " The brilliant sky blue (male) or Idue-sprinkled brown (female) 

 fringe-spotted butterfly " ; the third contains the Latin generic and 

 trivial name. The names already given by Linnaeus are generally 

 adopted and indicated l)y the letter L. References are also made to 

 Poda and Scopoli, and where the names of those authors are not adopted 

 their synonyms are given. A gTeat many species, however, are named 

 for the first time in the Catalogue. In addition, there are copious notes 

 and observations and frequent reference to the figures of earlier au- 

 thorities, such as Geoff re )y, De Geer, Reaumur and others, and in a few 

 intances of which Agrotis segetiim is one, a detailed description and figure 

 are given. Schiffermiiller was liighly esteemed l)y those who knew him 

 as a careful student of life histories,and the Catalogue, especially under the 

 influence of Hiibner, rapidly became the paramount influence in nomen- 

 clature, which position it retained until the appearance of the second 

 edition of Staudinger's Catalog. Staudinger, on the ground that the 

 majority of its names are impossible of identification owing to the 

 absence of adequate descrijDtion or figure, rejects all such, or adopts 

 them only on the authority of the later author wdio supplies the means 

 of identitication. This is, undoubtedly, simply the carrying out of the 

 British Association rule already mentioned, but on the other hand it must 

 be remembered that references are often given in the Catalog to figures 

 of earlier aiithors, and that many of the later authors, Fabricius, Hiibner, 

 Ochsenheimer and Treitschke, certainly, and Esper and Piorkhausen 



