Vlll. PREFACE. 



new genera wherever available. 



There is one point in particular, out of many others, in which 

 the work of these authors far * surpasses our own, and that is in 

 their mode of treatment of the variation of the species. Their 

 own immense collection, the visits paid by Dr. Jordan to all the 

 leading collections on the continent, the loan of types from out- 

 lying countries, &c, have permitted them to attempt to deal with 

 this phase of the subject on general biological grounds, and, in some 

 cases, they have thus been enabled to discriminate between the 

 " literary " type and the " biological " type, and, having determined 

 the latter, so far as the material allowed, have arranged the various 

 forms round it according to their assumed phylogenetic connection 

 therewith. For ourselves, our material has been too small and 

 our knowledge too limited to enable us to attempt anything so 

 extensive. Nor must we forget to draw attention to their 

 comprehensive scheme for separating the various forms, but their 

 reasons for changing the well-known term " aberration " to 

 "individual variety" and "variety" to "subspecies" appear to us 

 altogether unconvincing. To assume that, because ignorant and 

 careless lepidopterists make an erroneous use of existing 

 terminology, reason is shown for changing the terminology, 

 appears to us unwarrantable. In our more ignorant days we misused 

 the terms variety and aberration, over and over again, and main- 

 tained this misuse throughout the whole of our work, The British 

 Noctuae and their Varieties, but to assume that a different 

 terminology would have abolished our ignorance is at least open 

 to question. 



Other points arise out of this view of our subject, one of which 

 is that in which these authors gird at those who, like ourselves, 

 have adopted the Superfamily, Family, Subfamily, Tribe, Genus and 

 Species, as the various group names for classification. They claim 

 that these are too numerous, that the Family and Superfamily 

 should be united as the Family, and the Subfamily should be the 

 second term ot the series. It is humorous, however, to find them 

 calling the Superfamily Sphingidcs the Family Sphingidae, then 

 dividing their Family into Sections A (Sphingidae asemanophorae) 

 and B (Sphingidae semanophorae ) and subdividing A and B in due 

 course into subfamilies. The fact is that their method differs in 

 no respect from ours ; it is only a matter of terms, in which the 

 classificatory categories compare as follows : 



Superfamily 



Family 



Family 



Section of Family 



Subfamily 



Subfamily 



Tribe 



Tribe 



Genus 



Genus 



Species 



Species 



Variety or local race 



Subspecies or Geographical variety 



Seasonal variety 



Generatory variety 



Aberration 



Individual variety 



The authors claim simplicity for their method (2nd column) over 

 ours (1st column); we can only urge that if their method is the 

 more simple it is less lucid. We are unfortunate in not even 

 seeing its claim to simplicity ; for ourselves, it looks much like 

 putting a premium upon ignorance. Unfortunately, human 



