Ixv 
important and most numerous alterations are caused by adopting 
the names of an author who has long been purposely ignored as 
an authority for genera, both by English and Continental Lepi- 
dopterists; I of course allude to Hiibner. Such old names as 
Chionobas, Agraulis, Kresia, Godartia, Adolias, Polyommatus, 
Leptalis, Terias, Callidryas, Thestias, and Anthocharis, with 
many more, are changed for others which most of us have never 
heard of, and which are generally to be found in no other work 
than Hiibner’s obsolete and useless catalogue. Yet this wholesale 
change does not seem to be warranted by the Rules of the British 
Association, which indeed Mr. Kirby in his work altogether 
ignores. Rule 12 says: “A name which has never been clearly 
defined in some published work should be changed for the earliest 
name by which the object shall have been so defined.” And in 
the explanatory remarks it is said, “‘ Definition properly implies 
a distinct exposition of essential characters, and in all cases we 
conceive this to be indispensable.” Now this rule merely embodied 
the feeling and the practice of naturalists, and it had been acted 
on for nearly thirty years before it had been formally enunciated, 
in this very case of Hiibner, whose work had been systematically 
set aside as an authority by most Huropean-entomologists because 
it was felt that his so-called genera were mere guesses founded on 
faciés alone,—happy guesses no doubt sometimes,—but as fre- 
quently wrong as right, and wholly without such definition as was 
held, even in his own day, to be required to constitute a new 
genus. Boisduval expressly states this, at p. 153 of his ‘ Species 
Général des Lepidoptéres,’ and his non-recognition of Hiibner’s 
genera has been followed in almost all the great systematic works 
which have since been published. If we take Hiibnev’s first four 
genera, and the characters he gives for them, we shall be able to 
judge of the reasons for this course. 
They are as follows : 
Hymenitis . . Upper wings half-banded. 
Ithomia . . . Upper wings one-banded. 
uninterrupted and exclusive use for sixty-four years, is really preoccupied, it would 
be much better to alter it to Paphius, and still quote Fabricius as the authority, than 
change it to so totally dissimilar a name as Ansa of Hiibner. A more recent example 
is Idiomorphus, which might have been similarly modified and retained instead of 
being changed to Bicyclus, Kirby. No law requires this total change, while every 
consideration of convenience, no less than of justice, is better satisfied by a slight 
modification. 
K 
