INTRODUCTION. V 



the name may be adopted or not, at the pleasure of the individual 

 whose time permits him to describe its characters, and thereby 

 stamp an additional value thereon, by rendering it more generally 

 known. 



With regard to the MS. names in the following pages, it is of 

 little consequence whether those which I have proposed be adopted 

 or not; as they will ultimately appear in my " Illustrations," unless 

 the species to which they are applied should be described by others 

 in the interim. It is sufficient for my purpose to have pointed out 

 the new species, and the divisions (by whatever names caprice or 

 convenience may please to term them), and to have retained all such 

 as could satisfactorily be identified, which have been imposed by 

 others ; not only in justice to their authors, but as I do not choose 

 wilfully to create additional inconvenience by applying new ones 

 for the mere purpose of securing the paltry fame dependent upon 

 mere priority of nomenclature. 



Now with reference to such simple indications, as Latreille terms 

 them, not imposing any law, as to the adoption of the generic or 

 specific names, proposed by others without characters, I would in- 

 quire whether such names (at least those of genera), especially 

 when applied to well known species, do not as satisfactorily point 

 out the new groups, as when the characters are given in a language 

 peculiar to one nation alone, and unknown to a foreign student; 

 e. g. the genera of Lepidoptera by Ochsenheimer and Treitschke 

 are invariably characterized in German; and many of Latreille's 

 recent ones in French alone, and are consequently useless to the 

 mere English student, as are those of the Englishman or French- 

 man to the German, when given in their respective languages. I 

 therefore conceive that if writers are to be governed by the La- 

 treillian precept, the characters to be efficient should be given in 

 that language which is more or less known to all men of science 

 throughout the civilized world, notwithstanding it has been re- 

 marked that a work is more generally useful for being entirely written 

 in English ! But, as I before stated, I do not choose unnecessarily 

 to incumber the science with additional names; I have considered 

 the genera of Ochsenheimer, &c. here alluded to as sufficiently 

 characterized, though my ignorance of German prevents me from 

 correctly ascertaining their typical species ; and I have also en- 

 deavoured, so far as is consistent with its nature, to show how my 

 predecessors have cleared the way towards the ascertaining of the 

 new indigenous species, by referring to every English writer, and to 

 such foreign ones as lay within my reach, including even such 

 names as have hitherto appeared in the various German and French 

 catalogues when known to me by the inspection of original speci- 

 mens transmitted to this country by the respective authors. 



By the foregoing remarks it may be supposed that I am laying 

 too much stress upon nomenclature ; but as Linne says, " Nomina 



