VARIETAL AND ABERRATIONAL NOMENCLATURE. 145 
The Genus Hesperia. (With two plates.) 
By T. A. CHAPMAN, M.D., F.R.S8. 
(Continued from vol. xxix., p. 145.) 
Various circumstances, of which questions of paper and printing 
have not been the least, have interfered with the continuation of this 
exposition of the Huropean Hesperias, founded on Dr. Reverdin’s 
Revision in the Htudes de Lépidoptérologie comparée, Fasc. xii. 
I now offer the plates of the undersides of imagines, that ought 
strictly to have appeared with the last portion. These are those of five 
species of the cacaliae group and H. antonia for comparison with H. 
sidae. These reproductions from Mr. Tonge’s photographs are rather 
pale and weak, and not so satisfactory as those in pl. ix. of vol. 29. 
Still they show the forms and dispositions of the markings. 
These have been already dealt with, so that it is unnecessary to go 
over the same ground again. 
In the photographs of H. sidae and H. antonia the two species do 
not look so much alike as the actual specimens do. The orange in 
antonia is yellower than in sidae. The effect is a difference in the 
photographic values that does not strike one at all strongly in the 
insects themselves, the orange in sidae comes out as very much darker 
than that of antonia does, so that the photographs make the differences 
between the two species quite obvious. In the insects themselves the 
feature of both having orange bands that we hardly expect in Hesperias, 
impresses one with the resemblances and obscures the differences. 
The male appendages of H. sidae and H. antonia show that they 
belong to very different sections of the genus. 
Varietal and Aberrational Nomenclature. A Protest. 
By GEORGE WHEELER, M.A., F.Z.S., F.E.S. 
I feel impelled to write a few lines of friendly but emphatic protest 
against the position taken up by my colleagues, Dr. Chapman and Mr. 
Donisthorpe, in our July issue (pp. 124, 125), with regard to racial 
and aberrational nomenclature. Their contention is summed up in the 
following words written by Dr. Chapman and quoted, apparently with 
approval, by Mr. Donisthorpe. 
‘¢ Staudinger uses the formula var. et ab., i.e., giving the same name 
to a race that had been given to an ab. This cannot be sound, what- 
ever any authorities may say. 
~“T assert that a ‘race’ differs from the typical race if i€ is geo- 
graphically distinguishable, but as regards forms represented, need not 
differ more than by having the several forms in different proportions 
to those that are present in the type, 7.e., all forms in the one may be 
present in the other, but in different proportions.” 
I cannot imagine a piece of reasoning more unsound, nor a practice 
which, if followed out, would be more calculated to cause confusion, 
and to produce a burdensome and quite unnecessary addition to the 
already somewhat superabundant list of varietal and aberrational 
names. The only purpose of a name is to make the object named 
recognisable without a description (as Mr. Donisthorpe allows when 
quoting with marked approval Lord Rothschild’s paper on the subject), 
Avueust-Sepremsrr 15rx, 1918. 
