2612 The Zoologist— May, 1871. 



first-rate entomologists in favour of the Linnean order, the introduction of 

 the new arrangemeut " siih sUentio in a mere labelling list " was " an 

 affront to Science." 



Considering recent publications, Mr. Lewis showed that Dr. Knaggs (in 

 his ' Cabinet List of Lepidoptera ') had failed to observe, in a number of 

 instances, his own canon requiring preference of the female name when two 

 names are simultaneously given to the two sexes of a species, instancing, 

 besides others, the names " Janira," " Ai'cuosa," which should have been 

 " Jurtina," Linn., " Minima," Haw. He also complained that this 

 publication, like Mr. Doubleday's Lists, assumed, though published with 

 an object altogether different, to introduce changes in arrangement. 

 With reference to Dr. Knaggs' proposal to place Pterophorus after 

 Pyralis, he remarked that " if such a change was to be so brought 

 about it was a waste of time ever to write a book." Remarking on 

 a passage in Mr. Newman's ' Natural History of British Moths,' as to 

 Mr. Doubleday having " approved " certain changes, Mr. Lewis declared 

 that what entomologists want is not that changes should come to them 

 "stamped with the approval of tliis or that leading man, but that an 

 author, who proposes any change in nomenclature or arrangement, would 

 fii-st state all his reasons, and then leave the approval to them." 



M"r. Lewis strenuously protested against any changes in arrangement 

 being introduced in a mere list of synonyms, and quoted M. Guenee as 

 satirizing the practice. As to changes in names, he suggested that the 

 legal maxim " Communis error facit jus" might with advantage be apphed 

 in cases of long-forgotten specific names, as he felt assured it would, in 

 effect, be, in the case of tlie misaj^phed generic names detailed by 

 Mr. Crotch in the Eut. Soc. Trans, for 1870 ; and he also condemned the 

 insufficiency of the information given by all the English lists, showing that 

 none of the lists stated the reason for a change of name, or whether the 

 discarded name was supplanted by a prior one, or found to refer to a different 

 species. 



With reference to Mr. Lewis's criticisms on recent changes in the 

 ai'raugement of British Lepidoptera, Mr. Briggs remarked that Mr. New- 

 man, in his ' Natural History of British Moths,' had united Tapinostola 

 Boudii and Miana arcuosa into a genus termed Chortodes, giving no 

 reason for this change excepting Mr. Doubleday's " approval." Mr. Briggs 

 had examined the palpi of these two species, and found they were very 

 dissimilar : he considered, therefore, that this union of the two into a 

 special genus was unnatural. 



New Part of ' Transactions.' 

 Part i. of the * Transactions for 1871 ' was on the table. — R. M'L. 



