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affinity of Geometra to Bombyx, it would be necessary to re-arrange 
Noctua, and in his plan, then proposed, made no suggestion that it would 
be necessary to divide Bombyx. Mr. Lewis also gave a variety of reasons 
against the new order. 
He also mentioned that some of the species now grouped as “ Pseudo”- 
Bombyces had, by Latreille, been denominated ‘ Bombycites Legitime,” 
and some by Hiibner ‘ Bombyces vere”; that the twenty-seven species 
now separated from the Bombyces by the whole of the Geometre were, by 
Westwood and other writers, considered so closely akin to the “true” 
Bombyces that they were included in the family Arctiide; and that the 
Linnean order, from which the order of 1859 showed so great a departure, 
had received illustrations of its propriety in the nomenclature adopted by 
Denis and Schiffermiller, by Hiibner, Horsfield, Boisduval, and many 
others, viz. Noctuo-Bombycide, &c., Semi-Geometre, &c., Semi-Noctuales, &e. 
Mr. Lewis then expressed his opinion that, considering the concord among 
first-rate entomologists in favour of the Linnean order, the introduction of 
the new arrangement “sub silentio in a mere labelling list” was “an 
affront to Science.” 
Considering recent publications, Mr. Lewis showed that Dr. Knaggs (in 
his ‘Cabinet List of Lepidoptera’) had failed to observe, in a number of 
instances, his own canon requiring preference of the female name when two 
names are simultaneously given to the two sexes of a species, instancing, 
besides others, the names “Janira,” ‘“ Arcuosa,” which should have been 
« Jurtina,” Linn., “ Minima,” Haw. He also complained that this 
publication, like Mr. Doubleday’s Lists, assumed, though published with 
an object altogether different, to introduce changes in arrangement. 
With reference to Dr. Knaggs’ proposal to place Pterophorus after 
Pyralis, he remarked that “if such a change was to be so brought 
about it was a waste of time ever to write a book.” Remarking on 
a passage in Mr. Newman’s ‘ Natural History of British Moths,’ as to 
Mr. Doubleday having “approved” certain changes, Mr. Lewis declared 
that what entomologists want is not that changes should come to them 
“stamped with the approval of this or that leading man, but that an 
author, who proposes any change in nomenclature or arrangement, would 
first state all his reasons, and then leave the approval to them.” 
Mr. Lewis strenuously protested against any changes in arrangement 
being introduced in a mere list of synonyms, and quoted M. Guenée as 
satirizing the practice. As to changes in names, he suggested that the 
legal maxim “ Communis error facit jus” might with advantage be applied 
in cases of long-forgotten specific names, as he felt assured it would, in 
effect, be, in the case of the misapplied generic names detailed by 
Mr. Crotch in the Ent. Soc. Trans. for 1870; and he also condemned the 
insufficiency of the information given by all the English lists, showing that 
