RETROSPECT OF' A LEPIDOPTERIST. 179 



are duly and continuously carried out. A society must set a high 

 standard, even if it fail to quite reach it. 



Of separate works there have been very few. ]\Ir. Meyrick's is 

 probably the book of the year. It is the strangest jumble of advanced 

 views and retrograde movement that has ever been published. We 

 have nothing but praise for the man who can step straight out of the 

 old ruts, and produce a book which entirely uproots the treasured 

 shibboleths of a school of entomologists, who were suckled on New- 

 man and Stainton in their entomological babyhood, fed on Newman 

 and Stainton in their youth, starved on Newman and Stainton in their 

 manhood, and are still striving manfully to obtain nutriment from 

 them in their old age. To such, if they see it, the book will be a 

 revelation. But when one gets out of old ruts one must know that 

 the new road is sound, and here our author is very doubtfully a trust- 

 worthy guide. The lines on which a new scheme of classification 

 wants formulating must be compounded of the Avork done by 

 specialists in various lines of work — Comstock, Dyar, Packard, 

 Kellogg, Scudder, Chapman and Hampson are to hand. Instead 

 of availing himself of all the material possible, our author chooses 

 a path of his own, and neglects all the special work. Needless 

 to say, he often fails hopelessly. The unweildy genera revert largely 

 to the time when all butterflies were Papilio, all moths with pect- 

 inated antennae — Bombyx, all "Plumes" — Alucita, and soon. In 

 fact, the genera often comprise impossible combinations, and show 

 the author to be utterly ignorant of the early stages of most of our 

 British species. The book in detail is an utter failure ; yet in its 

 broad aspects, we repeat again, that we have the greatest respect for 

 the industry and pluck of the man Avho has produced it. 



Another year is approaching. May 1896 be a red-letter year to 

 all classes of lepidopterists. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 



Secondary sexual characters : Male tufts of Xantiiia aurago 

 AND Lkucania lithargyria. — At sugar here I took a moth very like 

 Xantiiia aurafin in size, form and markings, but of a dull grey-brown 

 colour with no yellow or orange tint, and with no fan-like appendage on 

 the under surface of the body. The only typical A', aurat/o I have 

 examined this season has a conspicuous red " fan " protruding 

 among its legs (probably it has or had two such appendages). Can 

 anyone tell me whether these "fans" are generic, specific or only 

 sexual distinctions ? Some specimens of what I believe to be Lcucania 

 lithan/i/ria have black tufts somewhat similar, but not so fan-like. — 

 F. NoEGATE, 98, Queen's Road, Bury St. Edmunds. [Sexual characters. 

 —Ed.] . 



The hybernating stage of Dianthobcia capsophil^. — I cannot 

 help feeling that in his remarks on the hybernating stage of D. 

 capsophila, Mr. Kane has rather confused two distinct phenomena. 

 Referring to his remarks thereon [ante, -p. 55) he writes : — " Dut«- 

 thoetia capsophila emerges indiscriminately from the end of April till 

 the middle of August, and hybernates both in the pupal and occasion- 

 ally in the larval stages." On two occasions I have had fairly large 



