1 67 



ON SOME HISTORICAL ERRORS. 



By W. H. Edwards. 



In a paper entitled " Contributions from the Trans-Continental Sur- 

 vey. The genus Colias,'" Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., vol. 22, De- 

 cember, 1882, it is stated as fact that six of the Colias females were 

 " caught in copula;" p. 154. On next page, that " of the six couples 

 collected in copulation, of one the male is Philodice, the female Ed- 

 7uardsii. Another pair show the male without, the female with, sub- 

 marginal spots, and a third pair is just the reverse." 



On p. 163, under C. Christina, we read: " I have two females from 

 Umatilla, Or., and Yakima, W. T. , entirely like the tigured one" (?. e. 

 the one figured in But. N. A., vol. i ). "They were collected among 

 numerous C. Edwardsii, and are entirely pale yellow without a border. 

 As similar ones with a faint beginning of a border were taken in 

 Copula with C. Edzvardsii, \\\&x^ can be no doubt that the females without 

 border belong also to C. Edwardsii. ... It would certainly need a 

 stronger proof to consider these males' ' (the males Christina as figured) 

 " as a separate species, the more so since they are associated with an un- 

 doubted female oi Edwardsii. ' ' Here are more facts, and from them im- 

 portant deductions are made. The author is endeavoring to argue out 

 the species Christina, of which he had then never seen an individual speci- 

 men. He first asserts that among numerous Edwardsii taken was a 

 female like the one given on the plate of Christina (which has no bor- 

 der to either wing on upper side ; then he asserts that similar females 

 (that is, two or more) with a faint beginning of a border were taken in 

 copula with males Edivardsii. These are the facts. The conclusion from 

 the facts is that the female figured as Christina is an undoubted female 

 Edzvardsii, and hence the males figured must also be Edzvardsii. (Which 

 last does not follow at all, even if the female figured had been an Ed- 

 zvardsii.) A species is wiped out, and all because certain Colias pairs 

 were taken in copula !* These statements of fact are without qualifi- 

 cation, and are made of the author's own knowledge as a member of 

 the expedition. 



On the other hand, the author bears hard on me because at one time 

 or other I had allotted certain females to certain males as constituting 

 one species, when all that was known of them was what the dried but- 

 terflies showed. He distrusts dried butterflies, and wants facts! On 



* It is amusing to read in 1885 this emphatic decision as to Christina, inasmuch as by the large 

 collections of Captn. Geddes and others made in '83, '84, the species has become thoroughl\- well 

 known, and is as sharply characterized as any species of butterfly on the continent. 



