xvi *.. W. A. Lewis on 
in M. Guenée’s Noctuclites.* Of Seopoli, writes M. Guenée:— 
—‘‘His method has very little of the natural about it; his 
descriptions are for the greater part unintelligible, and his 
names completely arbitrary or wrongly applied. This writer 
then we must take small account of; for the rest he is little 
consulted, and no one has followed him.” Of Schoeffer, he 
says:—“ His figures are as badly coloured as they are coarsely 
engraved, and in order to be recognizable had great need of 
the explanatory text of Panzer. Even with this addition his 
iconography is scarcely of any use save to clear up some pas- 
sages of the ancient authors.” Of Fabricius himself, M. Gue- 
née writes:—‘ The greater part of the species do not possess 
the characters of their section, and the 880 Noctue which he 
has described are in reality thrown together without any order, 
and without any correlation between them. This makes the 
works of Fabricius an entirely unarranged repository, and 
much less useful than people have been accustomed to think it. 
You are obliged, in fact, to neglect a crowd of species which 
he created and named in visiting the different cabinets of 
Europe, because, after all the attention possible, you result 
almost always in uncertainty, or in finding over again a Noctua 
already given under other names.” Of Goeze, M. Guenée 
remarks: —“ His work is not original in any respect. The 
considerable time which this voluminous compilation required 
by no means finds any justification in the utility of the book, 
and it is much better worth while to have recourse to the same 
sources as the author than to follow him in his errors and 
repetitions.” 
Of Esper, M. Guenée says :—“ This collection, extensive as 
it is, is at this day much neglected, and the work sells at an in- 
significant price, which must be attributed in the first place to 
the imperfect character of the figures, which are, in fact, the 
roughest for the age, and of which a certain quantity are un- 
recognizable . . . . As for the text, it is scarcely anything but 
one long compilation, to which is added a synonymy swelled by 
the diagnostical phrases, and sometimes by the old description of 
the authors whom he cites, but often applies wrongly... . 
Esper opened a disastrous road for science. I refer to the 
numerous varieties which he has figured as separate species, 
and to which he has given names which come forward to com- 
plicate our works without any use.” 
Of De Villers, M. Guenée says that “his additions to the 
“Systema Nature ” might have been used if he had taken any 
care to assure himself at the outset, that the species he had 
before his eyes were really those of Linné; but he has some- 
times committed in this respect the wildest mistakes, so that 
* See the chapter entitled “Classification et Bibliographie des 
Noctuélites” in vol. i. pp. xix—xe. 
