THE BRITISH LIST. 87 



They unfortunately appear to be largely overlooked owing to not being 

 prom neut in their present po-itions ; still the facts are in the hands 

 of most lepidopterists, and they can still be got at by those who will. 



The "British List." 



By W. E. SHARP, F.E.S. 



Mr. Day, in his interesting record of the reappearance in Carlisle of 



the long lost Hnmti's jdaiiatns (not " Brautes phanatus ") {Eiit. Purnrd, 

 XX., ()2) remarks — " whether casual immigrants of this kind should be 

 considered as British insects is doubtful, unless they breed and 

 establish themselves, when there can be little reason for not admitting 

 them to our list." 



Such a record and the comment thereon, perhaps not unnaturally, 

 suggest reflections as to the true meaning and inwardness of this 

 "British List" whose validity and content appear to many of us a 

 matter of considerable interest and importance, and perhaps I may be 

 pardoned if I venture to discuss a little more at length the merits of 

 the case, and the definition of the term a little more fully. 



Now, it would seem that there are two quite distinct senses in 

 which the "British," or indeed any list of a circumscribed faunistic 

 area, may be used, two ideas which the same term connotes, hence the 

 possibility of difficulty or confusion in its application. 



One constantly hears discussed the claim of some doubtful native 

 to a place in this exclusive " List ; " indeed the entomological public 

 is sometimes tacitly invited to constitute itself into a kind of 

 court of appeal on the right of entry of such " destitute aliens " of the 

 Tnsecta. One has heard suggestions of a "time limit," a fixed number 

 of years, after which, should the applicant have proved himself capable 

 of an honest and respectable livelihood in these islands, letters of 

 naturalisation should be granted. 



Now, I venture to think that, in a true or really scientifia sense, no 

 such naturalisation is possible, admission must depend on a lineage 

 vastly more ancient ; for I would define as " British " in the faunistic 

 sense, only that assemblage of insects which had become established here 

 by exclusively natural means, those in which man, with all his 

 activities, his ships, and his commerce, had no part. The test would 

 be original natural establishment, and, by establishment, I would mean 

 survival over such a space of time as would include all possible 

 climatic vicissitude. In this sense I should regard the claim of such 

 a species as RInjncliites bacchus, even if it could be demonstrably proved 

 to have been extinct here for fifty years, much more admissible 

 than that of the too familiar Blattae oi our kitchens, or of many of the 

 ubiquitous A7//f/, />'>v/(7)/, and C_'/7//»?o/j/(rt/// of our granaries. Most certainly 

 would I repudiate the idea that the " British List " should be in any 

 degree a kind of census of the entomological population of the 

 kingdom on the date of its publication. On the contrary I hold the 

 " British List " of science to be practically a closed book, closed with 

 a few possible exceptions before the historic period, closed long before 

 the first Phoenician mariner sighted the unknown Cassiterides. 



That such an original establishment of the British fauna took 

 place, from whatever quarter the immigration may have come, during 

 the period which elapsed between the end of the glacial a"-e and the 



