XX Ti. W. A. Lewis on 
sharp sentences from any quarter cannot influence the conctu- 
sion at which those who weigh the reasons may arrive. 
The plea for “justice to predecessors” seems to be founded 
on the doctrine that the author who has first named an insect 
has a personal and individual right to have the name given by 
him retained. We are concerned with old authors; and I 
think we must be already satisfied that in upholding, regardless 
of consequences, a divine right in the first name-giver, we 
should be paying a reverence which would be somewhat laugh- 
able. It is entertaining for a little while to trace out the odd 
variety of accidents which combine sometimes to establish the 
names of the old authors. One author names a species (in one 
of the large genera) giving it an original name ; that name 
had been hit on by some one else for a different species in the 
same genus (= group), which was not rare in times when gods 
and goddesses gave all the names to butterflies. The first 
nomenclator thus goes to the wall because his name is “nom. 
preoce.” <A later author comes and mis-identifies his deserip- 
tion with a different species altogether, which he accordingly 
publishes to the world; by this time the genus has been 
divided, and consequently the name destined for species Ae 
and which was in error taken for species B., stands for species 
B., and not for the one to which it was originally given; the 
blunderer obtains immortality, and his friends importune us for 
“justice.” This is by no means a rare kind of mistake, and 
there are many others quite as humorous. It constantly hap- 
pens that a man’s uprightness works his fall, but his back- 
slidings put him on his legs again. But though sufficiently 
amusing, the subject is really very much beneath discussion, 
Although the old writers were most often little acquainted 
with what others had done, the works of Linné and Fabricius 
would appear to have fallen in the way of most of them. It 
is instructive to observe how the early writers themselves got 
on with the descriptions even of Linné; and I think we here 
reach a point in the discussion where we get a strong inde- 
pendent light on the facts, and our argument receives a good 
deal of assistance. 
When Linné completed his labours he had (as we have said) 
described but 780 species of Lepidoptera, and of those a large 
portion were day-flying insects inhabiting Europe. ‘Those who 
immediately succeeded Linné also described numbers of day- 
flying species inhabiting Europe. Now, investigation shows 
that these writers then ascribed the Linnean descriptions to 
widely-different species. Linné by no means described all the 
European day-flying Lepidoptera; but, perhaps, from a belief 
that he had done so, many of the writers who immediately 
sueceeded him seem to have managed if possible to find some- 
where in Linné’s works the species they had under description. 
Thus when they had a butterfly with black wings and white 
markings on them they went, say, to the “Systema Nature” and 
