302 Mr. W. Arnold Lewis on 
The Butterflies were no longer Rhopalocera, but were 
named Diurni; the heterogeneous collection of Sphinges 
and part of the Bombyces was named, with a pugnacious 
disregard of tradition, Nocturni (the name Nocturna being 
already well-known as designating, in Latreille’s arrange- 
ment, all the moths outside the Sphingidw). The family 
Platypterygide, not imcreased or reduced by a single 
species, was now termed Drepanule; and, greatest 
defiance of all, the separated Notodontide, being all the 
species included in that family by Stamton, and all save 
one originally so named by Stephens, were termed 
Pseudo-Bombyces. 
The names introduced by the revolutionists are all, I 
venture to think, unfounded and unsustainable. 
They term the Butterflies Diurni; and no doubt would 
say in justification, that m domg so they merely revived 
the name given by Latreille. Latreille’s name was a 
completely good name according to Latreille’s system ; 
for that system established three leading groups desig- 
nated according to their time of flight. Latreille’s But- 
terflies were Diurna, but his Sphinges were also Crepus- 
cularia, and all the other Lepidopterous insects he termed 
Nocturna. The division by times of flight has long been 
abandoned, for many reasons; the most simple being that 
the names conveyed a wholly erroneous notion of the 
actual habits of the species, since a crowd of insects 
besides the Diwrna are known to fly by day. In the face 
of this history of the name, it was surely an error to 
revive it; the name Fhopalocera for the butterflies had 
been fully accepted by entomologists, and the change was 
altogether gratuitous. 
But what of the name Nocturni for Sphinges and Bom- 
byces together,—even putting aside for the present, the 
absurd union of these groups, which has been discounte- 
nanced even by the followers of the new arrangement? 
This name Nocturni is also, we have seen, completely 
understood by entomologists as designating one of 
Latreille’s three great divisions, the distinction between 
Nocturna and Nocturni not being, I suppose, a matter of 
which any nomenclator would make very much. The 
use of those divisions is not continued at the present 
day, but the name has its history in entomology, as indi- 
cating a different group of insects from that to which it 
