The Zoologist — May, 1871. 2611 



to the year 1859; also that the Liunean names of the different groups 

 were adopted very generally until the same date. Mr. Lewis remarked that 

 since 1859 we in England had been subjected to the discomfort of having 

 two rival systems of arrangement, the followers of neither of which take the 

 smallest recognition of the other. He noticed severally the groups of 

 Doubleday's List, and stated, successively, reasons against the acceptance 

 of the names Diumi, Nocturni, Drepanulse and Pseudo-Bombyces ; con- 

 tending, in effect, that, in the case of the two first-named groups, the new 

 names wei-e, from their history, inapplicable; and as to the others, that 

 both divisions had prior names. He also objected to the name " Pseudo- 

 Bombyces," on the further ground that the scheme of classification of 

 which that group forms part does not acknowledge a group " Bombyces," 

 and therefore a group " Pseudo-Bombyces," in the same scheme, is a 

 solecism. 



Mr. Lewis expressed his belief that the existence of the group Pseudo- 

 Bombyces was entirely owing to the necessity, in M. Guenee's view, of 

 maintaining the order of the Noctuse which he, and other authors, had 

 observed. To do this it was necessary to place them in the old position 

 next after some Bombyciform genera, as the group had been arranged to 

 " face towards " Bombyx. Mr. Lewis contended that the course followed 

 was empirical, and was, besides, a failure, because the order of the Noctuae 

 still led one to expect the Geometrae at the end of the group. He con- 

 tended, also, that the division of Bombyx had become a necessity when 

 M. Guenee determined to place Geometra next to Bombyx without 

 re-arranging Noctua, and that the jjarf of Bombyx separated was then 

 never in doubt, since Platypteryx (as everyone had remarked since 

 Linnaeus) would easily join the Geometrse and Cerurae. He showed that 

 M. Guenee had (in 1852) admitted that in order to give effect to the 

 affinity of Geometra to Bombyx, it would be necessary to re-arrange 

 Noctua, and in his plan, then proposed, made no suggestion that it would 

 be necessary to divide Bombyx. Mr. Lewis also gave a variety of reasons 

 against the new order. 



He also mentioned that some of the species now grouped as " Pseudo "- 

 Bombyces had, by Latreille, been denominated " Bombycites Legitimae," 

 and some by Hiibner "Bombyces verse"; that the twenty- seven species 

 now separated from the Bombyces by the whole of the Geometrae were, by 

 Westwood and other writers, considered so closely akin to the "true" 

 Bombyces that they were included in the family Arctiidae ; and that the 

 Linnean order, from which the order of 1859 showed so great a departure, 

 had received illustrations of its propriety in the nomenclature adopted by 

 Denis and SchiffermiUer, by Hiibner, Horsfield, Boisduval, and many 

 others, viz. Noctuo-Bombycid8e,&c., Semi-Geometrae,&c., Semi-Noctuales, &c. 

 Mr. Lewis then expressed his opinion that, considering the concord among 



