

PSYCHE. 



ORGAN OF THE CAMBRIDGE ENTOMOLOGICAL CLUB. 

 EDITED BY B. PICKMAN MANN. 



Vol. I.] Cambridge, Mass., July, 1874. [No. 3. 



Vernacular Names for Butterflies. 



It may be that in England the native species of all classes 

 of birds, butterflies, and flowers (and, I trust, of fishes like- 

 wise) have received common English names. 



My experience is that in continental countries of Europe a 

 great many species, such as come under most frequent obser- 

 vation of the public, have their common names and often 

 three or four different names at a time, each according to 

 provincialisms. A popular name of a fish is of acknowledged 

 utility in a market, and could not be very well supplanted by 

 a scientific one, yet without their scientific names being as- 

 certained, there would be little comparison possible between 

 markets West and East and those of Europe. The popular 

 name under which a plant or butterfly is known cannot but 

 have a charm even for a scientific searcher, and ought to be 

 remembered by him and promulgated in print. But his task 

 is to popularize science by utilizing such names, and by them 

 to lead amateurs to awaken to the advantages of scientific 

 nomenclature as one that is not provincial, nor exclusively 

 English, but cosmological. 



Amateurs cannot possibly take much interest until they 

 begin to bring things into groups by their own observations 

 of similarities, and later with scientific assistance into genera, 



I want to have genuine popular names (be they ever so 

 local, as " Camberwell Beauty " for a butterfly that ranges all 

 over Europe and over America to California) distinguished 

 from names that are created more or less arbitrarily, or by 

 merely translating scientific double names into the vernacular. 

 The adoption and promulgation of these latter ones seems to 

 me of veiy doubtful policy, as they do not harmonize with 

 the originally popular names and may create, in an amateur's 



