74 THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S RECORD. 
look of a species one is very soon surprised to find what a number of 
varietal differences can be detected, which at first sight had passed 
wholly unnoticed, and in specimens which seemed identical with each 
other. These inconspicuous characters are very often found to be 
wonderfully constant in some localities, and they furnish an index to 
the existence of a distinct local race, although they may seem quite 
uninteresting to a superficial collector on the look-out for striking 
variations, who will much prefer a conspicuous accidental aberration 
for his cabinet. 
The late J. W. Tutt, in his Natural History of British Butterflies, 
their World-wide Variation and Geoyraphical Distribution, has done much 
in the way of preparing the ground for a systematic study of individual 
variation, but his nearly superhuman gift of patience and minuteness, 
by which he has put together such an enormous amount of data and 
observed and classified minute details, does not seem to have been 
accompanied by an equivalent power of synthesis. What I venture to 
suggest is that series from as many localities as possible should be 
worked out with Tutt’s analytical method, that statistics should be 
drawn from them and then compared together. 
Turning our notice again to the object of this note, it may be 
observed in a general way that a continental entomologist on examining 
British series of butterflies, is at once struck both by the prevailing 
tendency to melanism and by the extraordinary extent of individual 
variation. The first character is of course due to the northern latitude 
and gives to British races an arctic or alpine appearance; the second 
is probably due to insularity, for it can be observed at just as high a 
degree in the totally different warm-country races which inhabit the 
Mediterranean Islands. The cause may be dampness, for experimental 
breeding has shown to me that the most stable races, when bred from 
their ova in an atmosphere saturated with moisture, give out very 
marked individual variations, whereas ova from the same batch reared 
on the same food, in ordinary conditions, produce the same form as 
that observed at large. 
The second object of this paper is to give an account of the 
latest work done on nomenclature in reference to British species. 
Many English entomologists are of a conservative nature and 
alterations grieve and irritate them; they think these changes 
complicate work to an unbearable extent, as names are but a 
conventional way of understanding each other, and might just as 
well be. left standing as habit has fixed them. Unfortunately 
there are facts, besides the obvious one that correctness is always 
desirable, which oppose themselves to this easy way of reasoning, as 
the necessity of clearing up satisfactorily the literature of the past is 
made more and more pressing on account of the increasing minute- 
ness of modern work. A few years ago it was sufficient to make out 
what species the author of its name meant to designate by it, nowa- 
days instead not only must one fix on what geographical race he 
originally described his species from, but even what individual form. 
In consequence it becomes clear that, unless we can come as soon as 
possible to a satisfactory definite conclusion as to which author has the 
right of priority, we run the risk of setting out from the wrong point 
in working out variation, and thus of increasing the confusion in 
literature to a hopeless extent. 
