June, '04] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. I83 



Hiibner began to write in 1793, or thereabouts, and in 1806 

 published the celebrated " Tentamen," a very suggestive clas- 

 sification of the Lepidoptera in which a number of new names 

 were proposed, with each of which a known specific name was 

 associated. There were no descriptions, no explanations, only 

 names ; suggestive enough to one who knew, absolutely un- 

 meaning to all others. 



Here we come to another opportunity for disagreement. One 

 school holds that each new name being associated with a known 

 species, that species thereby became the type, and this was all 

 that was needed. The other maintains that such a term is a 

 nomen nudum, a naked name to which no definite meaning is 

 attachable. As a number of authors, including Ochsenheimer, 

 were then writing, it becomes a question of some importance 

 to fix the status of the "Tentamen." Hampson ignores it. 

 Dyar accepts it. So we have an added opportunity for differ- 

 ences in generic terms, and there is nobody that has authority 

 to settle the differences. Some authors, including myself, 

 recognize secondary sexual characters as suflScient for generic 

 separation, — /. e., a series of species with pectinated antennae 

 in the male may be generically separated from a series in which 

 these appendages are simple in both sexes. Hampson and 

 others hold that such characters should not be used, but that 

 a genus should be equally recognizable in both sexes. I 

 rather sympathize with that view of the case ; but the result 

 of its adoption gives us horribly unwieldy genera, and as gen- 

 era are for convenience of classification only, I have deemed it 

 best to admit the use of characters peculiar to one sex only. 

 I remember I told Dr. G. H. Horn, many years ago, that in 

 my opinion there should not be genera which could be deter- 

 mined from one sex only. His reply was, " Until you know 

 both sexes you do not know the species, and when once you 

 know the species there is no difiiculty in recognizing the ge- 

 nus." I have kept this point in mind ever since, and it really 

 decided me in favor of the practice that I have adopted. 



The important feature here is that by this difference of opin- 

 ion Hampson s work differs from mine in certain generic divi- 

 sions and, so long as we continue to differ, the same specific 

 name may appear under different generic terms. 



