PAPILIO. 



Prgan of tl^e J^ew Jork pntomological flub. 



Vol.111,] March, 1883. [No. 3. 



COMMENTS ON DR. HAGEN'S PAPER IN NOV.-DEC. 

 No. OF PAPILIO, ON P. MACHAON, Etc. 



By W. H. Edwards. 



My own views on the subjects treated of by Dr. Hagen are 

 so different from his that I cannot let his paper pass without 

 notice, the more especially as now that he has seen the way to 

 the demolition of half a dozen unlucky species of Papilio, he is 

 is evidently warming to the attack in other quarters. This, as he 

 tells us, is but "a portion of a Preliminary Report on the Butter- 

 flies of Washington Territory," and by the sample we judge the 

 piece. 



My learned friend, whose great attainments in biology and 

 in general entomology we all recognize, is also a specialist, and 

 his specialty is not the Lepidoptera. - In Neuroptera or Hy- 

 menoptera he is high authority, in fact, in the former, the highest 

 we have, but it is no disparagement to him to say, that in Lepi- 

 doptera, and especially in the North American Diurnals, he has 

 not been known as an expert. That he should sit down, there- 

 fore, to a Report on Butterflies, and be able to give us fifteen 

 printed pages on the first genus treated of, strikes me as some- 

 thing out of the common. 



Now, it came to pass last summer that Dr. Hagen was offered 

 the opportunity of accompanying the N. T. Survey, with the 

 privilege of collecting what he could without hindering the pur- 

 pose of the Survey; but was "expressly prohibited from ad- 

 vancing systematical or biological entomology." It was a great 

 thing to be allowed to collect at all, but a most unfortunate one that 

 not even a butterfly egg could be gotten unless it was picked off 

 a bush, and that would amount to n;)thing, witiiout violating the 

 conditions of the appointment. Questions have been raised that 

 could easily have been settled by breeding the butterflies from 

 the eggs, laid by the females of the Papiliosin confinement, but, 



