2]fi THE ENIOjiOLOuISt's RECOKD. 



and who have a feeling that names are changed to worry theiu, and to 

 give them much unnecessary labour. Collectors never will and never 

 can keep pace with scientific entomologists, who devote as many hours 

 in a week as the collector does in a year to his subject ; they can be 

 very useful to the scientific worker if they collect with their heads as 

 well as their hands, and they may depend upon it there is no need to 

 rearrange their specimens in their collections, to make the latter look 

 scientific, every time a new catalogue is published. 



Herr Embr. Strand, of Christiania, has distributed advance copies 

 of his " Beitrag zur Hchmetterlings-fauna Morwegens," no. iii, forming 

 pp. 109-179 of vol. xiii. of the Xi/t .l/m/flr/?/ for yatiirridinshaherne. 

 It deals chiefiy with material collected by the author in southern 

 Norway in 1902. but lack of time has prevented his yet working out 

 some of the families, and, in many other cases, from the same cause, 

 he " has had to content himself with the determination of the species 

 without given special investigation to the varieties and aberrations 

 included." Even as it is, we fear that the author — who collects also 

 other orders of Arthropoda — has attempted more than he could quite 

 satisfactorily carry out ; and a piece of interesting work on local 

 variation, on which we should have been glad to be able to bestow 

 unmingled praise, is marred by the same fault which stultifies so 

 large a proportion of similar publications — namely, an insufficient 

 acquaintance with the previous literature of the subject. To be sure, 

 Herr Strand has been less negligent in this respect than some other 

 writers, and his list of 86 works and articles quoted includes much of 

 the most important of the literature, especially that of his indigenous 

 fauna ; but still he has failed to consult some books which should 

 have been essential before he burdened synonymy with another instal- 

 ment of varietal or aberrational names. In particular, he seems to 

 be unaware that we have analysed the ordinary range of variation of 

 many of the European Rhopalocera in our IJritish JUittcrriies (London, 

 1H96), and he gives us three "new" al)errations of < (loioiii/nip/ia 

 /jaiiiphilKs, not one of which seems to difi'er enough from previously 

 known forms to merit renaming : ab. caeca, Strand, certainly sinks to 

 iibsolcta, Tutt ; ab. biocellata, Strand, without doubt to ab. biptipilUUa, 

 Cosm. ; whilst ab. alhiila. Strand, is hardly, if hi all, more extreme 

 than ab. pallida, Tutt. In Aifrotis [^iacluiobia) hi/pcrhoira, a new 

 variety, var. norreiiica, is fully described and discussed (pp. 18-1-187), 

 and, although it seeuis to be founded upon too slender material, 

 considering the extreme variability of the species, it is quite possible 

 that It will really show sufficiently constant ditterences from other 

 known local races. In the Geometrids, Herr Strand has had a some- 

 what clearer field for the introduction of new names, as most of them 

 have not yet been systematised from this point of view, and our author 

 is acquainted with most of the scattered work of Fuchs, Keuter, 

 Lampa, Huene, etc. His Larentia surdidata (1 1 i/drioinota fiinata) ab. 

 roitstiicta is here (p. 140) indicated as " n. ab.. ' which is misleading, 

 as it was already published in his last year's papers (ridf An/i. Matli. 

 Sat., XXV., no. 9, p. 20). Other forms newly named, which will be of 

 interest to IJritish entomologists, are An/i/tiiiis Uitli())iia ab. ab.^citrasi-oin 

 (the two large silver spots in cell s confluent, etc.) and (inufi/ius 

 tiu/rtilldta (( 'ata!<chi nhi'ioicata) ab. a)iast(niiusis (transverse lines sharply 

 black, meeting below the middle, thus forming an irregular figure 8). 



