THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



107 



would be ended. When all is said and done they lead public opinion. 

 Flooding the market with individual opinions in the form of lists, will pro- 

 duce immense uniformity, at least this is the opinion of the list manufacturers. 

 How this list mania is extending is well illustrated by the following fact. I 

 was in a well-known dealer's shop in London, a very short time ago, when a 

 new synonymic (?) list was offered me, which had been got up by the proprietor. 

 The list was a slight mixture of most existing lists; but I thought it rather 

 a serious joke, when turning to the Coleophorae, I found the genus Coleophora 

 arranged with all the latest additions to the fauna at the end, and with no 

 regard to their affinity. Yet such a a list, will, in turn, take its stand 

 as a literary production, with the other varieties of the same species now 

 in existence. 



I would now ask Mr. Eobson if Staudinger's Catalogue, as far as synonymy 

 is concerned, is much the best publication of its kind — and 1 think he will 

 grant me that — why not adopt it? I know there are errors, but so there will 

 be in the best list made, lieject the errors when it is proved satisfactorily to 

 every one that they are errors, but adapt the list as it stands to our needs. 

 We shall then be in touch at one bound with the lepidoptensts of almost the 

 whole of Europe. Mr. Eobson has pointed out errors in Dr. Staudinger's list, 

 but, I believe, I can put my finger on two or three of the same kind in his own 

 list as far as it is published. If all the efforts of our list makers were directed 

 to the production of one good list, and the best of its kind now in existence was 

 taken as a basis, we should soon get uniformity, but all the while individuals 

 with more or less limited means at their disposal, try their hands at the work, 

 so long will the result be worse than failure, for they are creating such a 

 chaos that all lepidopterists will be, like most of themselves already are, 

 overwhelmed in the result of their labour. 



Mr. Eobson seriously proposes that some of the Societies are to take in 

 hand the herculean task of seeing that no more changes are made, and refers 

 to many provincial societies as ready to start. May I ask what seems to me 

 a fundamental necessity- — Where is the start to be made, and what is the 

 start to be based on? And then in the last sentence of his article he says, 

 " Except with the European entomologists, little difficulty would be ex- 

 perienced." Is this not a rather large exception list ? To me it seems so. 

 The European lepidopterists are men of wider and broader knowledge than 

 English lepidopterists (always excepting those few grand entomologists, who 

 are happily still among us, and who are revered as much or more abroad than 

 at home), and is it likely they will pander to our insular prejudices ? We must 

 begin by giving almost everything, and at this price the English lepidopterLt 

 would in a few years be the gainer in every possible respect. W e should 



