18 _ THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 
has the longest oviduct obtains possession thereby of the grub in the 
central part of the gall for the maintenance of its young ones, and the 
latter have a longer life in the gall than the young of the short oviduct 
species. The different species thus dwell in different concentric circles of 
the gall, and observations may be made whether there is mutual agreement 
as to the boundary lines between their respective territories, or whether 
complications occur between them when they have removed the earlier 
inhabitants. : Many other species of insects dwell in these galls, and there 
is also much yet to be ascertained in the domestic habits of each one, 
whether herbivorous or carnivorous. 
MISCELLANEOUS. 
GENERIC NOMENCLATURE.—Can not some method be devised to check 
the recently introduced habit of rehabilitating fossil genera ? 
To borrow a geological simile, these had their little day of life in the 
Eozoic period of entomological science, proved themselves unfitted to 
survive in the struggle for existence, and then disappeared—it was to be 
hoped, forever. Is it not taking a very unfair advantage of the older 
authors to make them responsible for genera of which they had no, 
conception, and which certainly would have been indignantly repudiated 
by them P 
What a change, for example, from Papilio of Linnæus, an overgrown 
genus, capable of containing whole shoals of its lesser successors to Papilio 
Linn., {este Scudder, applying solely to one insect, already well supplied. 
If Mr. Scudder’s proposed revolution in our nomenclature should be 
adopted, I fear that also, on the other hand, the laboratories of the “‘ genus 
grinders ” will resemble the mills of the gods in one respect, and in one 
only, namely, that of “ grinding exceeding small.” If every genus has a 
single type, then, as species differ structurally more or less, what can be 
more evident than that each species is in itself the type of some genus, 
and immortality as enduring as that of Eratostratus is within the grasp of 
the man who grinds out his genera with the greatest rapidity |—TuEo. L. 
MEaD. 
ATTRACTING LEPIDOPTERA.—At page 194, vol. ill, CANADIAN ENTO- 
MOLOGIST, attention is drawn to a new French method of collecting 
Nocturnal Lepidoptera by means of bait. 
