Tue ZooLocist— Jury, 1872. 3131 
lost for ever. Besides accomplishing this we shall have gotten for ourselves 
an even more valuable result. We shall have administered a check to a 
class of publications which tend more than any other agency to impoverish 
the literature of science. While authors find the roll of fame is supplied by 
the wrapper of a catalogue, the best may be content to inscribe their names 
only on that worthless sheet. The hot quest of ephemeral notoriety once 
made profitless, we may expect that more energies will be directed to the 
production of serviceable books. Rely upon it, to encourage innovating 
synonymic lists is, in every way possible, to retard entomological science. 
This branch of Natural History, from the small differences which divide its 
subjects and the inequality of nearly all descriptions accurately to express 
such differences, baffles the ‘law’ of priority to fix its nomenclature; and 
sooner or later that conviction must force itself upon all.”—P. 85. 
Every entomologist may receive instruction from reading Mr. 
Lewis’s ‘ Discussion’; most will agree with him in his thorough 
condemnation of the present lawless application of the law of 
priority: all will be glad to accept a remedy; but from whence is 
it to come? It is very plausible to issue a “ Proposal for the 
Rejection of all Disused Names,” but who shall decide on what 
names are disused? Take an example: 
In 1776 Hiibner figured a butterfly as Papilio Medea: it bears 
the same name in the Vienna Catalogue. 
In 1777 Esper calls it Papilio thiops. 
In 1787 Fabricius calls it Papilio Blandina. 
In 1832 Dalman calls it Hipparchia Neoridas, and the three 
previous names are disused by this talented and most 
learned author. 
In 1857 Mr. Stainton calls it Erebia Blandina. 
In 1870 Mr. Newman calls it Erebia Medea. 
It would be interesting to know which of these names must be 
considered “disused” and which not “disused”; Medea (1776) 
and Blandina (1787) are still in full request: there is no suggestion 
that either is disused. We must by some law dispose of one of 
them. If Priority be not that law, what is? 
EpwarRp NEWMAN. 
