153 



Argynnis Nitocris Edw. Tr. Am. E. Soc. 5 15 1874. 



'' Carpenter! Edw. 1 c. 5 204 1876. 



" Electa Edw. Field and Forest, 3 143 1878. 



" HippolytaEdw. Can. Ent. 11 82 1879. 



" Laura Edw. 1. c. 11 49 1879. 



" Chitone Edw. 1. c. 11 82 1879. 



" Macaria Edw. Field and Forest, 3 86 1877. 



" Clio Edw. Tr. A. E. Soc. 5 106 1874. 



" Artonis Edw. 1. c. 9 2 1881. 



So far as I have been able to consult the description of these species 

 I find nothing to guide me in accepting or rejecting them, but those 

 published in the Field and Forest, I have not been able to consult at 

 all, as that journal is not accessible to me in England. 



There are no specimens of any of these species in any European 

 collection that I know of, and if there were, I could not trust to them 

 unless identified by Mr. Edwards himself. 



The only information I can get about them from America is that the 

 types are in Mr. Edwards' collection, and that they are elsewhere not 

 to be met with at present. What would American naturalists think of 

 it if I published descriptions of forms which existed in my collection 

 alone, in such a paper as Land and Water? Would not they be quite 

 right to ignore them ? I say j'^es, without hesitation. 



The number of scientific journals is now so great, and some authors 

 seem to take so much pleasure in scattering their descriptions broadcast 

 that unless some stringent rule is laid down to check the present prac- 

 tice it will be impossible to work at all without a public library of refer- 

 ence at hand, and even there the number of books one must have on 

 the table at once is incredible. All this trouble might be avoided if a 

 rule was made that only certain specified publications should be re- 

 cognized as the medium for describing new species, and that the de- 

 scriptions must either be accompanied by a figure, or give specific 

 characters,by which the species could be certainly recognized. Without 

 this, descriptions of nearly allied forms of Colias, Argynnis ,Lycsena, 

 and many other genera are practically useless. Compare Mr. Stretch's 

 remarks on the genus Arctia. Papilio, vol. II., page 90. 



Mr. Edwards says on page 60 that in all his experience of breeding 

 butterflies from the ^^Z, whilst what many had supposed to be 

 mere varieties had often turned out distinct species, yet he does not re- 

 collect one instance where the reverse had taken place, and a form 

 which he had supposed on the strength of the imago only to be a 

 species had turned out by breeding to be a variety only. 



I will leave it to others to say how far this coincides with their ex- 

 perience, but will call attention to a passage in Dr. Rossler's Lepidop- 

 tera of Wiesbaden, 1881, pp. 87-88, in which, speaking of Agrotis tri- 

 tici, he says that out of the great number of specimens of this species 

 which he raised in 1871-72, the following plates in Hubner's & Herrich 

 Schaffer's works were all richly represented: 



Hubner. — A. fumosa 153. A. aquilina 135. A. obilisca 123. 

 A. fictilis 479 and 710. A. imicolor 544. A. eruta 623. A, 



