( xi I 

 do nut iiiiply 1(1 the specii^s guuericiilly ilctiued, coulaiiiiiig iTroiieous iuid niiiLe 

 misleiidiug shitcmeuts, di- whose genera couliiiu very lieterugeuedus eleiueiils, as 

 dti, tor iiishuiee, many of Walker's genera. Tliu\igli, in tlie original detiniLion of 

 rntlop<irrr (lype: rH.sllai), Burmeister slated that the iKi[ia had no jirojeeting 

 tongiie-case (whieh it has) ; though Staudinger erroneously said of his new genus 

 DolbiiM thill it had only one spur to the hiniltihia, and lluwe made a similar 

 mistake in (he definition of Smcriitthalus : and though the defitnliou of Moore's 

 llothid is so vague as to ujiiiiy to a liost of other Siiliiinjidu,: as well (as many 

 of Jloore's definitions doj, — these names eau and will not be rejeeled on that 

 aeeonnt. There is no line to draw between good and bad definitions, sullieient 

 anil insulKcient deseiijitions : and every descripliou is incomplete. 



The rirsi after Hiibner to treat again upon all the SiiJunnidac was Walker, 

 who, in the LlM of Lc/iit/optrra llflcroreni of tin: Urilislt Miisruin vol. viii. 

 (18o<i), gave deseri[itions of till the known genera and sjieeies and uuiuerons 

 new ones. His bibliography is generally good, but his deseriptitjns are often 

 so bail that it is im2)0.ssible to recognise the species without seeing his 

 specimens. He has lieen much attacked on the Continent, and his names liave 

 been ignored to a certain extent by a few authors. Walker did not attempt 

 u classificatiou of Ihe S[ihiii<fi(lai\ lie simply descrilied the genera in the 

 order he thought proper, without Ijringing them into groujis. His genera are 

 very ofteu as unnatural as many of liiibuer's. 



Boisduval followed in February of In?.") with a monograph of the I'auiily, 

 containing more exhaustive descriptions of the species ami genera. The 

 Sjjhinyulac are divided in this work into a number of subfamilies, of which 

 definitions are given, rather a rare occurrence in lepidopterological works of 

 that time. In the nomenclature of the subfamilies he followed the old French 

 custom of employing scientific terms in a gallinised form — a bad custom, which 

 was formerly in vogue also in the nomenclature of species and genera. The 

 monograjih, though far above that of Walker, had two great drawbacks : it did 

 not contain all the species described up to l5;74, aud names already emjiloyed 

 by \\'alker were used again for other species (see above). We mention inci- 

 dentally that Boisduval's names have priority over those of Butler which were 

 published in the Proc. Zool. Sor. Loud, of 1875. 



The Uevision of Spkintjltlor by Butler — which came out early in isTT, not 

 in l8Tii, as is ((Uoted by some authors — is scarcely more than a synonymic list 

 with occasional remarks. The genera are grouped into four subfamilies, but not 

 defined, except the new ones. Though the definitions of the subfamilies are 

 Inised almost entirely on the ijuite imperfectly known early stages, the grouping 

 is, nevertheless, an advance on Boisduval's classification. The work would have 



