THE YOUNG NATURALIST 



35 



Next he rubs out all Doubleday's work in adding the diminutive 

 termina alis, ana, ella, or dactylus, to the root of the name, and gives 

 us Staudinger's catalogue names for the species, doing away with 

 much of the generic work of our own and other authors. Otherwise, 

 excepting in his one original idea of changing the locality of the 

 plumes, he is all and everywhere a copyist, even to the family names, 

 errors and all. Why then should we adopt it ? Does it not appear plain 

 that this so-called law of priority, should have prevented Mr. South from 

 adopting Wallingren's recent division of the old genus Pterophorus into 

 Amblyptilia, Mimceseoptilus, (Edematophorm Wal., or Oxyptilus, and Aciptilia 

 of Zeller. Surely if this so-called law is good for specific names, then it is good 

 for generic and family names. We are told in a review of the list by 

 Mr. Dunning that the location of the plume moths is the striking feature 

 of Mr. South' s Classification, now divided, as they are into nine genera, 

 all nearly of which are recent genera ! ! Where then is your law 

 of priority? That they should be so divided is patent to any one 

 who knows the larvse, and their different appearances and habits, 

 but I must confess I see no affinity between Acentropos and Agdistis, 

 the one is aquatic, and the other terrestial, and though Chrysocoris may, as 

 Mr. Dunning says, have manifest relationships to the plume moths, and Curtis 

 may have said " this moth is closely allied to the Pterophori" meaning, I 

 presume, festaliella, Hub. I fail to see the necessity of removing nine or 

 ten genera to them or anywhere else, when they, if allied, might have been 

 brought to the mountain, be that as it may, to which of the Pterophorida 

 are they allied ? All the plumes were by priority Pterophorus Linn. Do not 

 think I object to Walhingren's and Zeller' s, or Hubners, or any other person's 

 division of the plumes, or any other family, I only object to people compiling 

 a catalogue under some fanciful idea of a law of priority, and apply- 

 ing it imperfectly to species only, and hardly recognising it as applicable 

 to genera and families. For instance, if an entomologist describes an 

 insect, and any book- worm thinks it unscholarly described, and thinks he 

 can do it better, though he be but an indifferent entomologist, he will not 

 have the name in his catalogue, but he will re-name it, and takes the entomo- 

 logical honour from the old entomologist, who did the work, and gives 

 future entomological students no end of labour. See p, 119, Yol. 14, and 

 p. 18, Yol. 17 Entomologist. 



I think 1 said there was only one original idea in this list, and I fail to 

 see any near relationship in the larvse state between C. festaliella and any 

 plume I know. I do not know any family in which the larva vary so much 

 in their mode of feeding, or in their appearance, as the Plumes do, and I see 



