it is reasonable to suppose that what is good for the reader is also 

 good for the describer. I have myself experienced — and perhaps 

 in part yielded to — the temptation, when writing to a figured type, 

 to trust to the figure to make the species intelligible, and therefore 

 to " scamp " the descriptive work. Again, when one compares 

 the writings (where such exist at all) of the iconographer Hübner 

 with the unillustrated works of Borkhausen, Haworth, or 

 Treitschke, can one hesitate a moment in deciding which have 

 done the more to advance the science of entomology ? Far be it 

 from me to depreciate the labours of Hübner, or to pronounce 

 his generally excellent figures valueless ; but one cannot help 

 feeling that his classificatory labours were in large measure 

 stultified by his one-sided attention to wing-pattern (the usual 

 danger of an undue love for the " good figure "), and I confess that 

 when first 1 realised that the Geometrid portion of Hübner's 

 Verzcichniss was contemporary with a part of Curtis's work 

 dealing with the same family in a vastly different spirit, I felt — 

 to put it mildl\- — inclined to challenge the occasionally expressed 

 opinion that Hübner as an entomologist was " in advance of his 

 age." Not that Curtls despises illustrations, by any means ; but 

 he gives anatomical detail, and so raises his work at once to a 

 very different plane. 



Before dismissing Hübner and his work, 1 ma}- mention a 

 curious and instructive example of the comparative ineificacy 

 of even a good figure, and the ease with which a few words of 

 description without figure could have saved a name from a century 

 of neglect. In his Sammlung Europäischer Schmetterlinge, Geo- 

 metrie tab. 75, fig. 386, he introduces a new species (nom. cum fig.) 

 Geómetra amniculata, which in my o])inion is clearly a rare aberra- 

 tion of unangulata Haw., and may likely prove to antedate it.' 

 The determination has been tcntativt^ly proposc^d by two or three 

 entouKilogists, but no one has felt any confidence in it. and it is 



' As scraps of information concerning the dates of Hübner's works are 

 always useful, I would point out one reference which — though it has long 

 been known to me — I unfortunately overlooked in working recently at a 

 joint paper on the subject (Sherborn and Prout, Ann. Mag. Xat. Hist. (8), 

 ix., 175-180), and which gives a rather earlier date to a few Geometrid 

 plates. Geómetra torraría Hüb., which is figured on pi. 71, is mentioned 

 in a review of Esper published February nth, 1808, in the Jena. Allg. 

 Lit. Zeit. (180S, I., No. 35, vide p. 279). 



