128 
to Maine and southward to Texas, as for instance Heliothis armi- 
gera, and certainly show little or no local variation, it is possible 
that others, now separated by us specifically, may be hereafter 
united as geographical races. The important work of Allen on 
our Birds, shows us the value of minute comparisons over wide 
areas. But we are very far from possessing the basis for such intel- 
ligent comparisons in the Moths. Our material must first be 
named and the differences, such as we find them, exhibited, before 
we can properly estimate the value of the distinctions we perhaps 
may at first overweigh. 
To the few intelligible figures of the older illustrators and the 
Spécies Général of M. Guenée, we have now to add the conscientious 
labors of Lederer on the Pyralidae, and of Zeller on Texan Moths, 
increasing the number of observations written in Europe on ‘our 
Moths, which are of permanent value. On the other hand the 
otherwise great labor displayed in the compilation of the British 
Museum Catalogue has been thrown away by the careless and 
incomplete descriptions it embodies, and it will remain a constant 
obstacle to a correct synonymy if we continue to recognise it as an 
authority. By its non-correction we are brought to face a dilemma 
by which we must either commit an act of violence and reject the 
Catalogue totally, or submit to the study of a repulsive compilation 
from whence we cannot derive either correct information or cer- 
tainty on any one point and expose our lists to endless and irri- 
tating changes at the dictum of the British Museum. While the 
first course is openly advocated by many European scientists, who 
are in reality less interested in the matter than ourselves, I, for one, 
must prefer the latter alternative, as I elect to suffer through an 
injustice rather than to countenance an apparent wrong. 
