BRENTHIS PALES, ITS HISTORY AND ITS NAMED FORMS. 85 
with the spots only very faintly and in part reproduced on the 
underside. The arsilache is a male with less strong spotting on the 
upperside, but with the spotting strongly reproduced on the underside 
forewings. It is a large insect. The isis is doubtfully a male, of 
deeper fulvous coloration of grand colour, and the underside only very 
faintly shows dark markings in forewing; in the hindwing underside 
there is a large increase in the yellow and yellow-orange markings, 
and the forewings below have the same colour very distinctly marked 
at apex. 
The two figures Hiibner called pales are distinctly the form to 
which Esper had given the name arsilache in 1778. On the other 
hand, the two figures Hiibner calls arsilache are equally as distinctly 
the form which Esper designates as a variety of his arstlache. 
Probably this inversion of what had been the practice for 21 years in 
the application of these two names, was established by the prestige of 
the work of Hiibner without investigation into what had been done 
before. 
I have asked Mr. Wheeler to comment on the above, and he has 
kindly sent me the following note :—[From all this evidence it would 
seem to result that we are quite correct in following Hubner, who is 
the first to definitely separate the two forms. Esper includes both 
under arsilache, and others later used pales and arsilache indiscrimi. 
nately. Esper’s inclusion of both forms under arsilache can hardly be 
said to admit of his being ‘‘ first reviser,” a position which is apparently 
Hiibner’s, for the name arsilache was not available for the pales form, 
which was already named by Schiffermiller, but was available for the 
form which he included as a variety, which had not been previously 
named. Hiibner was therefore quite right (though probably un- 
consciously, and still more probably without caring whether he was or 
not) in calling the one form pales and the other arsilache as he did on 
pl. vii.—G. WuHeEEwer.| 
I am afraid that I do not agree with Mr. Wheeler’s interpretation 
of the facts as expressed in the above note, although I am absolutely in 
agreement with him as to the continuance of the custom of using the 
name arsilache in the Hiibnerian sense as expressed in figures 36, 37 
on pl. vii., for the form of pales with strongly emphasised black spot- 
ting on the underside of the forewings. My argument for the reten- 
tion of the name arsilache in the above sense is based on the fact that 
it has been so used unchallenged for more than a hundred years. It 
seems to me simply idiotic in the extreme to reverse the multitudinous 
references in our literature to this form under the name arsilache. 
We have an excellent National Nomenclature Committee, and its deci- 
sions will doubtless be accepted by at least ninety-nine out of every 
hundred of our brother entomologists. The odd man can be ignored. 
Most subsequent writers give the name arsilache to the form 
with strongly marked forewing underside. As will be seen below, 
Herbst and Jablonsky in the following year called the form with 
weakly marked underside forewing pales, but they give arsilache as a 
synonym, possibly they did not consult, or were ignorant of Hubner’s 
work when the figures were being prepared. 
Herbst and Jablonsky in “ Natursys.” (1800), vol. x., p. 119, plt. 
272, figs. 1-4, described and figured pales (1 and 2), and pales var. 
(8 and 4). There seems little difference between the two uppersides 
