THE LEPIDOPTERA OF PERTHSHIRE. 71 



philosopher as well as a naturalist; it is the work of a man 

 who sees how important the history of even a single insect 

 may be in pointing out some problem of the past, and 

 proving the truth or falsehood of some real or supposed 

 epoch in the story of the world. This is said to be the be- 

 ginning of a complete catalogue of the Perthshire fauna, 

 and if the other living beings it contains are chronicled as 

 faithfully and well as the Macro-lepidoptera, the county 

 and its society of natural science will have just cause to con- 

 gratulate themselves on the work. 



The trivial names throughout the list — with, perhaps, the 

 single exception of Deilejjhila Galii — correspond with those 

 used by Dr. Staudinger in his last edition of the well known 

 " Catalog der Lepidopteren." It is very much to be desired 

 that we could elect a parliament of naturalists from different 

 nations to work out this subject of nomenclature and have 

 done w^ith it for ever; their decision should be like the laws 

 of the Medes and Persians, and allow of no possible appeal; 

 for my own part I should not care if we had an autocrat like 

 Adam, and whatsoever he called every living creature that 

 was the name thereof, I would myself abide by the decree; 

 and if I had to spell Cory don, Coridon, and Galii, Gallii, 

 or even to speak of Sesia triamndiformis, no word of grum- 

 bling should escape my lips: have I not already for years 

 written Arge Galathea and Lasiommata JEgeria ? Yet, 

 in sober earnest, if the ghosts of some of our grand old 

 naturalists could know what we were quarrelling about, they 

 would never rest quiet in their graves, but would wake up 

 and tell us that they invented names only for uniformity, but 

 that we make them a source of discord. It is not that per- 

 sonally I have any objection to learning a new^ alphabet, but 

 let me be assured that it is to be done once for all; if the 

 names by which I have known some British insects during 



