Vol. XXviii] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 465 



The revisions of the older genera are scattered through hun- 

 dreds of books and periodicals, many of which are extremely 

 rare, and many are in the various editions of old Encyclope- 

 dias. The advocates of the law mostly little know the hopeless 

 morass they would land themselves in when attempting to use 

 it. What the law really means is that the generic names to 

 which its advocates are accustomed are sacred and to justify 

 their use they quote a mass of old authors so that it would take 

 an expert with a complete hbrary at his disposal a week to 

 unravel each case he wished to prove or disprove. 



The only practical system for an individual author is when 

 the type of a genus is not stated or clearly indicated by its 

 author to take the first species on his list which agrees with the 

 characters he gives as the type. The only alternative to this, 

 if the "law of the first reviser" is finally adopted, is that an 

 International Congress shall first lay down clearly the principles 

 on which the types of genera are to be selected (not the half- 

 thought-out recommendations of the Monaco Congress), then 

 appoint small committees of experts in each order to draw up 

 and publish lists of the genera in which the types have not been 

 stated with their types as fixed on those principles, and that 

 the work should be so well done that it will command almost 

 universal acceptance ; this will certainly not be done in the life- 

 time of the present generation. 



There is another matter which will have to be settled if zoo- 

 logical nomenclature is to be rescued from the almost hopeless 

 muddle into which it has been allowed to drift by each author 

 and country using the generic names to which they are accus- 

 tomed without any guiding principles, and that, if nondescript 

 generic names are to be accepted or not, and, if not, whether 

 they are to be considered as preoccupying the name for future 

 use. In the whole of zoology these nondescript generic names 

 are, I believe, used solely by the micro-lepidopterists and by 

 some other American authors ; the decision in this matter is of 

 almost equal importance with that of the method of "fixing" 

 the types of genera. 



I am glad to see that Mr. McDunnough in the preface to Dr. 

 Barnes and his Check-List of North American Lepidoptera 

 discards Hiibner's "Tentamen." but the status and date or dates 

 of publication of Hiibner's "Verzeichniss" is of far greater im- 

 portance. The real genera for which structural characters are 

 given in the "Verzeichniss" are the "Stirps" and Hiibner's 

 lower divisions, "Familiae" and "Coitus," are mere form and 

 color sections and so considered by Hiibner himself, and should 



