sii Ae ee ee ee 
with sterling descriptions of species, original and masterly and 
systematic. The old books do not all merit this description. 
Perhaps, to avoid misconception, it is better to say at once that 
they all merit a different description. Let us start with this, 
that the knowledge of species which those writers possessed 
was restricted to comparatively a limited number in the case of 
each. When the author had but a small number before him 
for description, he would use only such of the characters of the 
species as served to distinguish each of them from others then 
known to him; and the better desecriber he was the more 
certain he would be to do it. But what use can now be made 
of descriptions so drawn up? ‘This objection speaks for itself, . 
and the truth of it must be plain to every one. So simple a 
matter did the “ differentiation” of species at first appear, that 
the whole description was the insect’s name. All the cha- 
racters which separated a species from all others were con- 
veyed in its name alone! The specific name (nomen speci- 
ficum) in Linné’s earlier works was, as has been clearly pointed 
out, “what to-day is called diagnosis.”* This afterwards had 
to be discontinued, but a few Latin words (more often than 
not falling short of three lines of print), formed the usual 
‘‘Linnean description” of a species. As to the extent of this 
objection : Linné described but 780 Lepidopterous insects, the 
number now known cannot be less than 30,000. Dozens of 
allied species all equally fit numbers of the old descriptions ; 
and such descriptions are now necessarily of no value. On 
this ground alone, an enormously large proportion of the oldest 
descriptions are at the present day unrecognizable ; and, since 
the discussion began, declarations have come from all sides 
establishing what I venture to consider is the agreement of 
entomologists on that point. 
The discovery, however, is a very old one indeed, and ap- 
peared in print more than sixty years ago, from which it 
appears that the oldest descriptions became strictly unrecog- 
nizable very soon indeed after they were written. Schonherr 
even (1810) remarks ft on “the incomprehensible and little 
available descriptions of the older writers.” Lacordaire f 
(1834) remarked that Linné and Fabricius were at that day 
“unintelligible without tradition.” In the time of J. F. Ste- 
phens § ‘confusion arose primarily from the difficulty there was 
of ascertaining the first name given, from the description being 
so vague and indefinite as to preclude the possibility of accu- 
rately determining the species intended.” M. Reiche has affirmed || 
that if the rule rejecting tradition were taken au sériewx the 
* Hagen, Can. Ent. vol. vi. p. 165. 
+ Synon. Insect., pref. iil. 
f Silb. Revue, vol. iv. 234. 
§ Stephens’ Cat. British Insects, p. iii. 
|| Ann. Soc. Ent. France, 3rd ser. yol. vii. 609. 
