Groups of the Lepidoptera, 319 
rate to state shortly, that the Linnzan order was Bom- 
byx, Noctua, Geometra, Pyralis. I need not state what 
descriptions of species composed each Linnzan group; 
but it may be worth while to mention that the species 
of the so-called Pseudo-Bombyces known to Linnzus, are 
described in the ‘‘Systema Nature” as Bombyces, and 
placed with the rest of that group between Sphinx and 
Noctua. The Linnean order is completely intelligible ; 
so intelligible indeed that, I believe, almost anyone 
would, without a book at all, of his own accord, arrange 
the Lepidoptera in this order. The largest species, the 
Sphinges, were put first; after them the largest moths 
that were left, Attacus and Bombyz«, the smaller division 
coming second. Next all the remaining moths with 
stout bodies, Noctua; after these, the slender bodies in 
their order of size, viz., Geometra first, then Pyralis. As 
I have said, this order was the simplest imaginable. It 
is the most matter of course thing in the world to put 
the biggest moth at the head of your collection, and the 
little ones at the end. Linnzeus placed the largest group 
at the head of his arrangement, and the smaller groups 
in their order of size after it. I should be very sorry to 
be understood as placing the Linnzan arrangement on a 
low ground. It is, I think, a natural arrangement, to 
place the group containing the largest species first, and 
those containing the smallest species last, and, unless 
some close affinities are outraged, it is, I think, a natural 
arrangement to place all the groups, from the first to the 
last, in the order of size of the species. It is certainly the 
most striking of the objections to the new arrangement, that 
it takes you straight from the largest Bombyces into the 
Geometre, from those slender insects back again into the 
large Bombyces, and then .after another spell of stout- 
bodied moths, drops you finally into the small ones. The 
Linnean groups with the Linnean names, and in the 
Linnean order, were adopted almost universally, down 
to the year 1840, a date from which their uniform accu- 
racy seems, as we shall find, to have been occasionally 
canvassed. Fabricius followed the Linnean order, and 
used the Linnean groups; so did the famous authors of 
the Vienna Catalogue; and so have followed Hiibner, 
Haworth, Ochsenheimer, Treitschke, Duponchel, Ste- 
phens, and, with special exceptions, Latreille; and so in 
recent times, Boisduval, Herrich-Schiiffer, Westwood, 
Horsfield, Lederer, Staudinger, and even Doubleday. 
Z2 
