34 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



to this hour the Vienna Catalogue is only quoted as an 

 authority for specific names, while its truly philosophical 

 character and deeply instructive teaching is altogether neg- 

 lected. I must, however, confess, after paying this just 

 tribute to the merits of the Vienna Catalogue, that the prin- 

 ciples of classification which it reveals are more especially 

 applicable to that portion of the Lepidoptera which I have 

 called " Sessiliventres" than as a guide for primary division; 

 for, strange as it may seem, there is no character yet dis- 

 covered, much less promulgated, which will serve absolutely 

 to distinguish the larva of a butterfly from that of a moth. 



Neither the authors of the Vienna Catalogue nor those 

 entomologists who have accepted its guidance — I more par- 

 ticularly allude to Horsfield and Swainson, Latreille and 

 Boisduval — appear to have felt this deficiency, for they have 

 quietly contented themselves with applying the differential 

 characters of larva and pupa to minor divisions or sub- 

 divisions, and have trusted to those of the imago for dis- 

 tinguishing between moths and butterflies. 1 make no 

 attempt to supply this great deficiency and desideratum in 

 our science ; but I cannot disujiss the subject without ex- 

 pressing a doubt as to the value of this binary division of 

 Lepidoptera, — whether the divisions Diurni and Nocturni, 

 Rhopaloceraand Heterocera,orPedunculataand Sessiliventres 

 do not recommend themselves as terms of convenience only, 

 and whether they have not been accepted with such uni- 

 versal eagerness because offering us a ready means of escape 

 from thought, reflection and laborious investigation. These 

 questions, however, cannot be discussed in a restricted paper 

 like this, and 1 therefore proceed to cite Dr. Horsfield's views 

 and experience on the classification of butterflies as formed 

 during his residence in the Island of Java. 



" 1 lived at this time at Surakarta — a province in the 

 interior, belonging to the native princes. 1 was amply pro- 

 vided with every convenience and facility for preserving what 

 1 had collected. Several draughtsmen had likewise been 

 trained, under my superintendence, for botanical delinea- 

 tions ; and the skill they acquired in those soon fitted them 

 lor tlie annulose department. I was, therefore, enabled to 

 entei'*upon a history of the metamorphoses of Javanese Lepi- 

 dojytera, a design which had long engaged my anxious 



