40 



graph I say nothing about being a lepidopterist, nothing about study- 

 ing butterflies in the cradle, nothing against another man having an 

 opinion on the subject. What a mountain my snow-ball has become ! 

 Does Mr. Elwes seriously think that the study of vegetable life would 

 enable me, for instance, to form an accurate opinion as to the limits of 

 variability in butterflies? I am sure it would not help me one whit more 

 than the study of painting would help a man to play the flute ; if the 

 same laws in all their details were applicable to plants and butterflies, 

 the student of botany might be fitted to become, in a short time, an 

 authority on Lepidoptera; so far as I have been informed, however, 

 this appears not to be the case; indeed, Mr. Elwes virtually admits the 

 fact when he says " Perhaps nothing does so much to shake one's faith 

 in the fixity of species as horticulture. 



On p. 154, Mr. Elwes is again troubled with his deceptive second- 

 sight; he concludes, from the fact that I have shown up Mr. Fryer's 

 inability to prove his claim to the species of Africa, Borneo, Java, 

 China, and the N. E. Himalayas (none of which he probably ever 

 saw), as mere sports reared by himself from eggs laid by Terias man- 

 darina of Japan, that therefore I, " no doubt," feel hurt; I can assure 

 Mr. Elwes that it would take a very great amount of such literature to 

 hurt me, unless, indeed, it is injurious to a man to be amused; I believe 

 it to be morally injurious to a man to disguise a species by either alter- 

 ing its natural coloration, or passing it off" as an inhabitant of a country 

 where it did not naturally occur; and I am only too glad when such 

 tricks are exposed; as tests of scientific knowledge they are usually 

 failures, owing to the want of ocular education on the part of those 

 who send them out into the world. 



In conclusion I may mention that I published no " Revision of the 

 Genera oi Pierina;'" in the Proc. Zool. Soc. , London, either in 1881 or 

 any other year, and that the observation which he quotes is in a ' ' Re- 

 vision of the genus Terias,'" published ten years before that date; more- 

 over, Mr. Elwes has misrepresented me by quoting only part of the 

 paragraph, as, indeed, the " therefore" would lead any quick reader to 

 surmise; one would almost think that Mr. Elwes had the keenness of a 

 publisher in refusing that which would damage his wares; the para- 

 graph runs thus, " My principal object in the present paper is to refer 

 the species of this very difficult group to the genera into which I sepa- 

 rated it in my ' Revision of the Genera of the Sub-family Pierinai' 

 (Cist. Ent. III. pp. 33-58). I shall not, therefore," etc. Mr. Elwes 

 would have it supposed that in those days of my innocence I shuddered 

 to think that by describing all the species at my disposal I should add 

 a heavy burden to that which, alas, must needs be borne; whereas I 

 simply proposed to clear up before starting afresh. 



