THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



175 



argue that the insect known and illustrated in continental works with oval 

 spots is not true Esper at all, and that his form had all round spots. If Mr. 

 Briggs can prove this, then evidently we have all for years gone astray. But 

 did any one ever see a Burnet with Jive round spots : I never saw one in my 

 life so spotted. The two first spots are always in my experience more or less 

 oval, and often so the third spot. Possibly in looking over thousands of 

 specimens you might find one with five round spots ; but I have not one in 

 my fine series of all our British Zygsenidae. 



In paragraph 7 of Mr. Briggs letter, page 154 of this journal, a most 

 illogical construction is put on my remarks (ante page 132). Mr. Briggs 

 there states that I say : 1 ' that even if proved distinct from meliloti, Esp., it 

 should still stand (on our lists) as var. meliloti" That -would be simply 

 absurd, and is not my statement at all. What I do say and still believe is : 

 " that up to this present time I have seen no proof that our New Forest 

 meliloti is not meliloti, Esp," [i.e. v;hat is figured for such in continental 

 works, and sent as that insect by continental dealers)., the part in brackets 

 now added. I then continue " If Mr. Briggs has proved (?) that, it (i.e. 

 meliloti) must fall from its position of a species to be a variety only, even 

 then 1 take it, that it would stand on our lists as trifolii, var. meliloti." 

 These remarks are to my mind abundantly clear, and imply that even if Mr. 

 Briggs' breeding experiment proves (which he did not at that time claim, 

 and which was so doubtful, according to his own words not mine), that our 

 insect was simply a variety of trifolii, and not a species. Even then, if our 

 insect was identical with the continental so-called Meliloti, Esp., it would 

 stand as Trifolii, var. meliloti. 



We have enough and more than enough of new names and varieties mihi. 

 What with the synonymy man and varietal name manufacturers we poor 

 lepidopterists get pretty well befogged. 



Mr. Briggs agrees with me that Mr. Gregson's simile " a race horse to a 

 carriage horse" is well put, and goes on to say: "yet we must not forget 

 that a race horse and a carriage horse are but forms of one species" (and so 

 I am inclined to think are all our Zygcence). Quite so, but let us carry the 

 simile one stage farther, and does Mr. Briggs think he could produce a 

 carriage horse from the foal of race horse parents in a single individual, by a 

 by a simple change of stable food ! A race or strong local form in the 

 animal kingdom is the result of very many years interbreeding under special 

 circumstances, and one hardly expects to reverse all this in one single 

 brood. 



At Mr. Briggs' request, 1 give now my impression of the one full-fed larva 

 of Zygcena I found in the Meliloti locality in 1873. I did not at the time write 



