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THE BRITISH NATURALIST. [September 



noctua. Boisduval's Rhodocera is met with first, not in the " Histoire 

 Naturelle des Insectes " of 1836, the date given by Mr. Dale, but in a 

 work on North American Lepidoptera published three years earlier. 

 Again Mr. Dale is wrong about Westwood, the name used by that 

 author in 1839 being Goniaptevyx. 



Coming now to Papilio, Fabricius was not, as suggested by Mr. 

 Dale, the first to limit its application as a generic name to the 

 Swallow-tailed Butterflies, Latreille had already done so in the " Hist. 

 Nat. des Crustaces et des Insectes," published in 1805, two years 

 before the abstract of Fabricius' " Systema Glossatorum " was 

 published in Illiger's Magazine. The date of Dalman's Amavyssus is 

 also wrongly given, it should be 1816. 



With regard to the Lyccenidce, Mr. Dale is in error in stating that 

 Latreille limited the name Polyommatus to the Blues ; like Schrank's 

 Cupido it included all the Lyceenidce, and, if Mr. Dale rules the latter 

 inadmissible he must, to be logical, apply the same treatment to the 

 former. The name is first used twelve years earlier than the date Mr. 

 Dale gives, and in the work mentioned above, in which the species are 

 set down in full. In the work of the date specified by Mr. Dale (18 17) 

 which is the first edition of Cuvier's Animal Kingdom, the species are 

 not detailed. Latreille says therein that the distinctive character of 

 the Lepidoptera to which he applies the generic name Polyommatus is 

 the possession of little eyes on their wings, that the most common of 

 them in the environs of Paris is P. alexis, and refers his readers for the 

 other indigenous species to the " Nouv. Diet, d' Hist. Nat." torn. 17, 

 p. 79. Turning to this work which was published in 1803, I find at 

 the page indicated a list of the Linnaean Pap. plebeii. In the "Ency- 

 clopedic Methodique" 1823, the name is still used for the whole family. 

 Hubner was the first, in his " Verzeichniss " of 1816, to separate 

 the Blues from the Coppers, and he divided the Blues into eleven 

 genera, five of which contain British species. Hubner's work, how- 

 ever, was very little known and his generic names for the Blues have 

 never come into use. Subsequent authors have shown much confusion 

 in the application of the two names Lyceena and Polyommatus, as the 

 following summary will show : Horsfield 1828-9, Stephens 1829, 

 Curtis 1829, and Westwood 1840, use Lyceena for the Coppers and 

 Polyommatus for the Blues. Duponchel 1844, Lederer 1852, Herrich- 

 Schseffer 1855, Rambur 1858, H. Doubleday 1859 (second edition), 

 Newman 1871, Staudinger 1871, use Polyommatus for the Coppers and 

 Lyceena for the Blues. Kirby in his Supplement, 1877, uses Lyceena 

 for Coppers and Plcbeius for Blues. Edward Doubleday in " The 

 Genera of Diurnal Lepidoptera" and A. G. Butler in his " Catalogue 

 of Insects described by Fabricius " 1869, use Lyceena for Blues and 

 Chvysoplianus for Coppers. Henry Doubleday 1850 (first edition), 



