70 THE entomologist's record. 



species, together with the philosophical bearings of entomology come 

 to be studied, something much more definite in the way of a " type " 

 will be needed. 



When a man, who has specially studied some particular group of 

 Lepidoptera, takes up a systematic work on that group, he expects to 

 be able to understand what the work means. If we look over 

 systematic works produced in any part of the Continent of Europe, 

 we feel that we know where we are ; but with American works it is 

 often very different. One may turn over page after page of some 

 American publications without recognising a single name as having 

 any connection with the objects one has studied, and one is made to 

 feel that with the authors of such works names are not a means 

 to facilitate the study of the science, but are themselves the science. 

 This attempt to substitute a study of names for the study of ento- 

 mology is the bugbear of modern entomology in America. Such an 

 unsatisfactory state of things seems to be due to the American com- 

 petitive system, under which, unless a man does something to astonish 

 his fellows, he is not considered to be doing anything. The wading 

 through a catalogue of this kind, which ought, in the ordinary course 

 of things, to give a student in any part of the world the greatest 

 pleasure, becomes from this cause a source of annoyance. This result 

 appears to be largely due to the fact that Americans have never 

 troubled to take into account the most recent systematic work done by 

 Europeans. Much of the best of this is the product of leisured 

 amateurs with deep scientific tastes, who have been only too conscious 

 of the utter worthlessness of a great deal of the work done by European 

 museum-workers, which the Professor himself attacks so fiercely in 

 the case of Messrs. Walker and Butler. Museum work is criticised in 

 Europe by the leading scientific men of the day as soon as it is made 

 public and, according as it is good or bad, is accepted, or relegated to ob- 

 livion. There appears to be much of this museum type of work, too, in 

 America, although work of a very different kind is also done there, 

 for a European worker can read most of the American magazines with 

 pleasure, and without being bored by an attempt to wade through 

 material which is intelligible only to the author. The manufacture of 

 separate genera for almost every s})ecies (often on the simplest specific 

 characters), the substitution for the world-wide and well-known 

 names of old but newly unearthed names, often of doubtful definition, 

 may be to the honour and glory of the resurrector from his own point 

 of view, but is a grievous error fi'om a scientific point of view. There 

 is not a lepidopterist from England in the west to Japan in the east, 

 nor perhaps from Japan in the west to England in the east, who would 

 not know what Cymatophora means, and to whom a certain value 

 would not at once be pictured by it ; but who knows what Bomhycia is 

 intended for ? The obsolete position of Bemas among the Noctu.^ is 

 retained, whilst Arsilouche alhovenosa, which is really almost un- 

 differentiable from Acronycta (sub-genus Viminia) nimids, is retained in 

 its old genus. Why does not Professor Smith really study alborenvaa 

 by the side of the American species belonging to Viminia ? Not their 

 dried bodies, which " natural selection," owing to the gi-eat differences 

 of their habits, habitats and environment, has made to take such 

 different facies, but the living insects, their eggs, larvte and pupa?. 

 Then he will be able to get over the great "facies" question, and 

 place the species rightly. It is not the first time that we have noticed the 



