146 THE ENTOMOLOGIST ’S RECORD. 
and has nothing whatever to do with the numbers or the proportion to 
other forms in which the object named may be found. (For instance, 
an arm-chair is an arm-chair, whether it occurs in the lounge of a 
Club where it is the dominant form, or as the seat of the 
President at the meetings of the Entomological Society, 
where it is a unique aberration.) I hold no _ brief for 
Staudinger’s Catalogue, and probably few people have spoken or 
written stronger criticisms upon it than I have, but I am convinced 
that his expression “var. et ab.” is entirely correct, for it is well known 
to everyone, and the fact is referred to by Dr. Chapman in the passage 
quoted above, that any form of a species which is racial in any locality 
is liable to appear as an aberration in others where the dominant form — 
is different, and the same name must apply to all insects of the same 
facies wherever they come from and in whatever proportions they may 
happen to be found. Let us follow out the opposite suggestion and see 
where it must and where it might land us. The blue ? of Agriades 
coridon appears in many places as an occasional aberration and is called 
ab. syngrapha; the corresponding form of A. thetis, which appears in the 
same way, is known as ab. ceronus ; but in some parts of the French 
department of Charente Inférieure the blue form of the 9? of 
both these species is racial; we must not then use the aberra- 
tional names syngrapha and cevonus for these races, and are 
at once confronted with two new extra names, and shall have 
an aberrational and a racial name for absolutely identical insects, 
and furthermore shall never know, unless we possess exact 
locality data, by which name we are to call any given specimen of the 
form. In the case of Lycaena arion matters would be far worse. There 
are a number of named racial forms of this species, most of which turn 
up as occasional aberrations in other localities, so that the type form 
may appear in one locality as an aberration of the racial form liywrica, 
in another as an aberration of the racial form arcina, in another of 
laranda, etc., etc., etc., and for each of these it ought logically to have 
a different name, in order that we may know of which racial form it is 
an individual aberration ; and to this would be added new names for 
each of these local races when they appeared as aberrational forms in 
the areas where others were dominant. These are merely typical 
instances representative of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others. 
The proposition indeed has only to be stated thus to carry its own 
refutation. The only alternative is the simple and natural conception 
of a wame as applicable to any and every insect (or other object) of 
the form to which the name was originally applied, quite indepen- 
dently of the proportion in which the form may appear, the fact that 
it is aberrational in any given locality being sufficiently notified by 
the prefix ‘“ab.,’’ which can be omitted in writing or speaking of a 
locality where it is racial. 
Lampronia quadripunctella, Fab., and its aberrations. 
By ALFRED SICH, F.E.S. 
Lampronia quadripunctella is a dusky moth with pale spots. It 
varies greatly in the number of spots present on the forewing. This 
variation has prevented some authors from understanding the descrip-. 
