()6 ]\fi-. BL"rLi:R on 3fr. Met/rick's views of certain 



Mr. INIoyrick states that ?//y niitlioritii as regards the Micro- 

 Lepidoptera " ?'.? as uureUable as that of Walker " aud he bases 

 this statement upon ahnost the tirsc paper pubhshed by me in 

 which Micro-Lopidoptera were described, a paper moreover 

 in which I tacitly declined the credit of the generic identification 

 of the species (see pp. 380 and 4U5, where I mention those who 

 kindly assisted me), the anthority therefore Avas not mine, but 

 that of Entomologists better known to science than Mr. Meyrick 

 himself, though I cannot assert that their studies, like this 

 author's, have been confined to the Micro-Lepidoptera, and, 

 therefore, it is possible that his identifications may be more 

 accurate than theirs; recently I have trusted much more to my 

 own examination of structural characters than I thought it 

 wise to do when just commencing the study of ]\Iicro-Lepidop- 

 tera, and, consequently, in his ci-iticism on my more recent work 

 Mr. Meyrick has been obliged to confine himself to indignant 

 remonstrances with me for placing species in the Gelechiida; 

 instead of the Depressariidw, and vice versa, forgetting that, 

 until he defined these families in one of his latest memoirs, 

 " Gelechiida' "' alone was 2:enerallv recoQ;nised ; he also contra- 

 diets my statements as to neuration in certain species, forgetting 

 that I have had experience in the studv of wing-veins, and 

 that constantly, for the last 17 years at least; and, therefore, 

 that my examination of a I\Iicro-L(']ndopteix)n may perchance 

 be accurate. 



Keturning to my paper in the Proceedings of the Zoological 

 Society for 1877. which is the memoir most vigorously attacked 

 by Mr. Meyrick, 1 may call attention to one point : Mr. Meyrick 

 says — "For example, as I have pointed t)ut hereafter, he has 

 described three ti/j)ical species of Crantbns and i-eferred them 

 separatelv to the (hiUerifkr, Plnjviihv, and C in' Ion id a', thi-ee 

 groups which do not e^'en, so far as is known, occur in New 

 Zealand at all""; in answer to wliich I mnst first of all deny the ■ 

 last charge made against mc, since I referral tlie third species 

 to the ^'Crambidti',^' not to the C/iilonidir, neither did I recognize 

 such a family, nor does (veiy Lepidopterist at the present dav; 

 indeed the vieAvs of Mr. Meyrick as to what constitutes a family 

 of Le]iidoptera are, in my opinion, entii'cly erroneous; a family 

 should I>e based mainly upon iharactci's ofi'ercd by the larvic and 



