GENERK NAMES OF BUTTERFLIES <_> 



Northern Hemisphere, that is, in the Palaearctic and Xcarctic Regions, while the 

 second portion would be concerned with the names of genera occurring in the Tropics 

 of the Old World and the New. It seemed to me at that time that a division of the 

 subject of this kind would have the advantage of providing in a compact form the 

 information needed by lepidopterists, most of whom then (as now) confined their 

 attention to the faunas of particular zoo-geographical areas, relatively few working 

 on an all-world basis. What was intended to be a first instalment of the first of the 

 foregoing works was published by the Trustees of the British Museum in 1934 as 

 volume 1 of a work entitled " The Generic Xante* of the Holarctic Butterflies " . That 

 volume dealt with names published from 1758 up to the end of 1863. This latter 

 date was selected, because it was the last year before the publication of the first 

 volume of the Zoological Record. The adoption of this date thus closed the awkward 

 gap which had previously existed between the beginning of that serial and the 

 closing year of the period covered by Sherborn's Index Animalium. The names dealt 

 with in the foregoing volume amounted to 500 in number and constituted a self- 

 contained group in the sense that very few of the genera, the names of which were 

 there listed occurred outside, as well as inside, the Holarctic Region. 



A very different situation was disclosed when the projected second instalment of 

 the work on the Holarctic nanus came to be prepared. Here it was found that in 

 addition to a large number of strictly Holarctic genera, there were also many nominal 

 genera which from a faunistic point of view could not 1" 1 lassified so easily. Each of 

 these genera had as its type-species a species that did not occur in the Holarctic 

 Region but which was regarded subjectively on taxonomic grounds as being con- 

 generic with the tvpe-species of some other genus not represented in the Holarctic 

 Region. Either to include such names in, or to exclude them from, a work con- 

 cerned only with a particular zoo-geographical Region would inevitably have given 

 rise to serious difficulties. If they were to be included, serious gaps would be created 

 in the companion work on the names of extra-holarctic genera, unless the same 

 particulars were to be inserted in that volume, a course which would have involved a 

 substantial amount of repetition. The exclusion of these names from the book 

 dealing with the names of holarctic genera would on the other hand have rendered 

 very incomplete the subjective generic synonymies then currentlv accepted. 



The difficulties discussed above are inherent in any attempt to deal with a world 

 fauna in a series of separate sections. Accordingly, it was finally decided to abandon 

 the plan to present the two portions of the present subject in independent works, 

 dealing respectively with the names of genera occurring in the Temperate and Tropi- 

 cal parts of the world, and in its place to deal with the whole subject in a single work. 

 Hence it is that the list now presented contains all the names so far published for 

 genera of butterflies, irrespective of the zoo-geographical regions in which those 

 genera occur. 



(b) Exclusion of systematic considerations and consequent adoption of an alphabetical 

 basis for the arrangement of generic names 

 As a corollary to the foregoing modification of the original plan, it was decided also 

 to depart in another respect from the arrangement adopted in the volume published 



