RETROSPECT OF A LEPIDOPTERIST. 177 



this work is to be found in the American magazines. What the 

 lepidopterist of the old school, the collector per .sr, and the unread, 

 think of these things, science cannot stop to enquire ! but to the vast 

 army of young lepidopterists, whose shoulders are already to the Avheel, 

 there can be no doubt what it means. It means that they will absorb, 

 as part of their entomological alphabet, the facts that have caused the 

 present race of lepidopterists so much study and pains to formulate, 

 that they will learn in their youth what others have reached with toil 

 in middle age, that they will be able to formulate progressive views 

 which will leave the present leaders in the back-ground, and thus help 

 on the ever advancing wave of human thought and knowledge. Here, 

 too, we would ofter a word of warning to those comparatively young 

 lepidopterists who are on the borderland of advance, and yet are likely 

 to fall back. It is easy to read now the various papers on the subject, 

 and to grasp their bearings. The papers in the American Naturalist 

 for the current year, and those in the Trans. Ent. Hoc. Land., will 

 give them the information they want. In a few years they will feel 

 hopeless, and fall back in many cases into the strange mixture that 

 forms the tail of our entomological word. 



On the Transactions of the Entomological Society of London we 

 shall find another of Dr. Chapman's remarkable papers entitled : 

 *' Notes on Puj)ie : Orneodes, Epermenia, Chrysocorys and Ptero- 

 phorus." Here we have an attempt to work out systematically, a 

 few of the heterogeneous groups hitherto included under the name of 

 TiNEiNA ; whilst "Notes on the Secretion of Potassium Hydroxide 

 by Dicrauura vinula, and similar phenomena in other Lepidoptera," 

 by Oswald Latter, M.A. ; and " An attempt to correlate the results 

 arrived at in recent papers on the classification of Lepidoptera," are 

 to be found in the same volume, and appeal particularly to British 

 lepidopterists. Other papers to be read are : — " The Genus Smerin- 

 thus," by A. Bacot [Ent. Record) ; " The British representatives of 

 the genus Caradrina," by L. B. Prout, F.E.S. {Ibid.). A series of 

 notes " On the nature of insect colours," by W. Eiding, M.D., F.E.S. ; 

 R. Freer, M.B. ; and the Eev. C. R N. Burrows (Ihiil.); " Hybernation 

 and Estivation," by W. F. de V. Kane, M.A., F.E.S. {Ibid.) ; " Par- 

 thenogenesis or Agamogenesis " {Ibid.); "Variation considered bio- 

 logically '' {Ibid.) ; " Notes on Noctua festiva and Noctua confina," by 

 F. J. Hanbury, F.L.S., F.E.S., a very careful paper, and "Coenonym- 

 pha typhon and its varieties" {Ihid.), by Dr. F. J. Buckell, 

 excellently worked out ; nor can we quite pass over the entrance of 

 Professor Grote into the arena of British lepidopterological polemics, 

 although we frequently disagree with his views. In the Entoiaologist 

 there appears to be only one paper of the slightest lasting importance 

 to Britsh lepidopterists : " On the cause of Variation and Aberration on 

 the Imago state of Butterflies, with suggestions on the establishment 

 of New Species," translated from the German by Dr. F. A. Dixey ; 

 besides " The Catalogue of Irish Lepidoptera," by AV. F. de V. 

 Kane, M.A., F.E.S., which, for the fourth year in succession, still 

 drags its weary way. In one way this " List " is most disap- 

 pointing, for whilst the author goes out of his way and makes a long- 

 excursus on a species here and there, the forms of other species Avhich 

 are abundant in Ireland are almost neglected, necessitating, in reality, 

 another list before the present one is finished. The E. M. M. has 



