466 Mr. n. J. Elwes 07i Butterflies fi'om Japan. 



were worth while to search for them ; but I do not suppose that 

 any thing I can say will have the slightest effect in modifying 

 his views. 



But I find that Mr. Butler can be very hard on others who 

 do not happen to have the same opportunities as himself for 

 special training and the same facilities for referring new and 

 rare species to their correct genera. 



I refer to his remarks in Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist,, March 

 1881, pp. 229 and 237, on M. Oberthiir's memoir on the 

 Lepidoptera of Askold, where, after going through his species 

 critically, and correcting the nomenclature of most of them 

 (which corrections will no doubt soon receive further corrections 

 at the hands of some one else), he says that " it is impos- 

 sible to overestimate the injury through waste of time which 

 is occasioned to workers by the publication of duplicate names 

 for the same species." 



In this remark I most heartily concur with him ; and though 

 I shall not attempt to defend M. Oberthiir from the charge of 

 adding new synonyms to the list, yet it is, at any rate, easy 

 to tell at once, by tlie beautiful figures in his liberally distri- 

 buted ' Etudes,' what are the species to which his names refer ; 

 whilst I defy any one, even when descriptions of over a 

 page length are given, as in the case of Colias Elivesi, to tell 

 with or without figures what such species as that and Colias 

 jyallens really are, unless they see the types. 



Since writing my paper I have carefully examined the 

 species in question at the British Museum, and see no reason 

 to alter my opinions respecting them — though, in the case of 

 C. subaurata, I think that the colour of the underside in 

 selected specimens may be enough to distinguish them. I 

 repeat that it is most unlikely that in such a genus — by which 

 I mean a genus of which most of the species are very 

 wide-ranging and very variable, developing, under different 

 conditions of life and in different climates, numerous slight 

 local varieties and possibly hybrids — it is most unlikely that 

 four species of one group (namely the hi/ale group, which, 

 in the whole of the Nearctic and Pala^arctic regions, has only 

 four or five distinct species, from my point of view) should 

 exist in Japan alone, or rather in that small part of Japan 

 from which Mr. Maries's collection came. I said collections 

 generally, but find that Mr. Butler includes in his list of 

 species in this one collection four Colice of this group. I 

 fully allow that the climatic conditions of the various islands 

 in Japan are varied and likely to develop numerous varia- 

 tions, as is abundantly proved by the plants of Japan ; but 

 this seems to make my case the stronger. 



