28 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF ONTARIO. 



In this paper, therefore, I jjropo^e to discuss this subject which has recently 

 been brought again into view by Mrs. Slosson's interesting paper in the first number 

 of the journal of the New York Entomological Society, and shall try to do so in a calm 

 and judicial manner. Of couise Mrs. Slosson would not tuggest that the names which 

 commend themselves to lier proteges should be generally adopted, but why should we not 

 have common names scientifically applied 1 



It is all very well to say that it should be as easy to remember the scientific as the 

 popular name, but it isn't. It ought to be, of course, just as it ought to be just as easy for 

 children to be good as to be naughty. 



I have often been asked the name of a moth and when I had given it, it has been 

 greeted with a laugh of deri.sion, for the gen;.n'al public scott" at these scientific names, and 

 one doesn't wonder when one looks over a catalogue and sees the terrible names, such as 

 nezahualcoyotl, which have been given to beautiful and inofiensive creatures. 



It does not degrade Botany to have the Cypripedium called the Lady's Slipper, the 

 Ranunculus the Buttercup, or Lonicera the Honeysuckle, nor does Ornithology suffer 

 because Hirundo Horreorum is better known as the Barn Swallow, and Tyrannus 

 Carolinensis as the Kingbird, and why should there be an outcry at calling the lovely 

 Idalia the Regal Fritillary, or Grapta Gracilis the Hoary Comma 1 



I believe that if we could have common names lor our butterflies and a cheap, but 

 good, book with a recognizable colored illustration of each species, such as England has 

 in Coleman's British Butterflies, we should have at least ten persons interested in ento- 

 mology for every one that we have to day. 



If it be urged that it is impossible to secure absolute uniformity in the use of these 

 names the same is true of the scientific names, as we all have to remember in reading Mr. 

 Scudder's works that what he calls Jasoniades Glaucus is what the rest of us call Papilio 

 Turnus. 



It seems to me that one of the chief objections to the adoption of these popular 

 names is their arbitrary application totally regardless of scientific relationship. For 

 instance, they have in England two butterflies, known respectively as the White 

 Admiral and the Red .Vdmiral. Naturally one would suppose that these belonged to the 

 same genus, instead of which they belong to entirely distinct genera, which in Kirby's 

 world-wide catalogue are separated by fifty-seven otlier genera, while on the other hand 

 the nearest ally in England of the Red Admiral is called the Painted Lady, which is 

 surely an opprobrious name. 



When I began collecting as a child, upwards of thirty years ago, and wanted to 

 know the names of ray treasures, I was told that Oardui was the Thistle butterfly. 

 Shortly afterwards 1 captured a specimen of Atalanla, and fairly gloating over the pre- 

 eminent beauty of its under surface I named it the Queen Thistle, for child though I 

 was, 1 at once recognized its clo.se relationship to the other. But in the common names 

 which have been proposed by various authors, the generic relationship has frequently 

 been lost sight of, A vei-y marked example of this occurs among Scudder's names in 

 two cases adopted from Gosse, for some of the Pierinie ; thus Eubule is the Cloudless 

 Sulphur ; Philodice is the Clouded Sulphur ; Lisa is the Little Sulphur. Then in the 

 genus Argynnis, Atlantis is the Mountain Silver Spot while Aphrodite is the Silver 

 Spot Fritillary, the latter certainly a most indefinite name considering the number of 

 silver spot fritillaries we have on this continent. On the other hand some of Gosse's 

 names were so well chosen that we can recognize the species intended even when linked 

 to wrong scientific names. This is strikingly the case in the Graptas, for which his 

 names were particularly appropriate and have in all but one case been adopted by 

 Scudder. 



The Violet Tip was his name for Interrogationis ; the Green Comma, though doubt- 

 fully linked with the name Progne, must have been intended for Faunus, not at that 

 time described, while the Orange Comma and the Gray Comma well indicate G. Comiua 

 and G. Progne. It is doubtless true that in English works the popular name is frequent- 

 ly given undue prominence, being printed in large type at the beginning of a description, 



