TIIK XAMKS OF BUTTEHFLIK.S. 787 



One examining tor tlie fii-Ht time tlie .scieiititic tciiiiiiiulojiy of Inittertiies 

 woiilil 1)0 interested lit socinn- how largely llic names, and especially the early 

 ones, had been bestowed l)v anthors who had rceeivcd a classical ednca- 

 tiou. and how extensively the Greek mythology figured in the nomencla- 

 ture of these creatures. The many forms of the name of Venus in 

 particular would strike one. Much of this is certainly due to the exanijile 

 set hy the first great nomenclator of zoology, Linne, who applied also the 

 names of Greek heroes in the Trojan war to a very large number of swallow 

 t:iil butterflies, and his example has been followed by lepidopterologists 

 down to the present day. A few notable exceptions will be found in later 

 times when names of old Scandinavian mythical heroes were introduced into 

 the nomenelatiu-e of European butterflies ; and in our own country Ilaiiis, 

 when he found so large a number of skipjiers unnamed, bethought him- 

 self of a new device, which was the use of the names of Indian chiefs of 

 greater or less historic fame which have come down to us, and his exam- 

 ple, first followed by Edwards and myself, has been taken up by nearly- 

 all subsequent writers, so that the bulk of the specific names of our Pam- 

 idiilidi arc now drawn from those of the dusky red aborigines of our 

 country. 



As to the very word "butterfly" itself, there has been much written, 

 but, strangely, as it seems to me, the persons best qualified l)y their philo- 

 logical learning are least assured concerning the derivation of the name. 

 Skeat and Murray can hardly be entomologists. "It has amused many 

 to devise guesses to explain the name," says Skeat. Mr. Frederick Clark- 

 son, in the Canadian entomologist (xvii : 44) thinks there is good reason 

 to l)elieve that the root-meaning of the word "dates back to early Egyp- 

 tian history, and as a hieroglyphic it is synonymous as representing the 

 qualities of completeness and perfection ^yhieh characterize the soul." All 

 of which I in my ignorance judge to be humbug. One distrusts much of 

 the reasoning drawn from hieroglyphs, for it would seem in general that 

 almost any meaning can be drawn from them by dilettanteism if only suf- 

 ficient ingenuity is put in. An English writer, whose name I do not now 

 recall (was it Miss Mitford?), has strenuously upheld the idea that a 

 butterfly was simply a better sort of fl}', laughing to scorn the common 

 notion, which seems to me, as I think it must to all entomologists, to Ijc 

 unquestionaljly the correct one. that the word is simply an ex])ressive name 

 given to the commonest form of luitterfly that is found in Europe, where 

 the name arose, namely, the buttei-flies of the genus Eurymus, Avhich aie 

 ordinarily of much the same kind of yellow that one finds on the buttercup, 

 whence the name of both. One feels the greater confidence in this be- 

 cause the term is applied in so many different languages in much the same 

 way. In Anglo-Saxon, it is buttor-fleoge, which is simply butterfly ; 

 while some of the variations of this term in otlicr languages are tlie DiUch 



