xii. 



with which he replaced the chaos of an earlier time. In giving names he 

 knew what he was about better than we can know, and when he thought it 

 better to alter a name he had adopted before, or that had been used by- 

 others, we may be quite sure he had good reasons for the alteration. Surely 

 the carefully revised completion of a great work is a safer starting point than 

 an earlier and admittedly imperfect edition. It must be borne in mind that 

 I am referring exclusively to the science of entomology, for in the sister 

 science of botany, plants had been divided into species and genera long 

 before the time of Linnseus. For instance, Kay, in his " Catalogues Plant- 

 arum Anglize et Insulaeum Adjacentium/' published in 1677, divided the 

 perfect plants of our island* into 23 genera. 



In a letter to Haller, bearing the date of June 8th, 1737, Linnaeus writes : 

 " Those who come after us, in the free republic of Botany, will never subscribe 

 to authorities sanctioned only by antiquity, if we retain such intractable names 

 as Monolasiocallenomenophyllum and Hypophyllocarpodendrium ; why should 

 we therefore retain barbarous or mule names, or names distinguished only by 

 tails. Witness : Alsine, Alsinoides of Ray, Alsinella of Dillenius, Alsinastrum 

 of Yaillant, Alsinastroides of Kramer, Alsinastriformis of Plukenet, Alsin- 

 anthemos of Pay, and Alsinanthemum of Kramer. I could not help laugh- 

 ing when I saw a certain Botanist establish a genus by its tail alone, calling 

 Convolvuloides, because it had an upright stem. Why does the termination 

 oides displease ? Because it is the asylum of ignorance. Botanists seem to 

 me never to have touched upon nomenclature as a subject of study, and 

 therefore this path of their science remains still unexplained." 



If we turn to our own British Isles again we find that, in the year of our 

 Lord 1742, Benjamin Wilkes published at London twelve folio copperplates 

 of the more showy English lepidoptera, disposed in imitation of pictures ; with 

 an engraved emblematic title, highly ornamented, dedicating the work to the 

 Aurelian Society of that day. The English names of the insects, and often 

 the names of the plants on which they feed, together with the times and 

 places they are found in, are likewise engraved at the foot of each plate, but 

 no letterpress appears to accompany them. The butterflies are the Peacock, 

 White Admiral, Swallow-tail, Bed Admiral, High Brown (or more properly) 

 Silver- spotted Fritillary, Large Tortoise-shell, Ultramarine or Common Blue, 

 Purple Hair-streak, Marmoris or Marbled White, Darkened Green or High 

 Brown Fritillary, Comma, Painted Lady, Bock Underwing or Black-eyed 

 Marble, Purple Emperor, Small Pearl-border or Dark Pearl-bordered Fritillary, 

 Great or Silver-striped Fritillary, Clouded Yellow, Small Tortoise-shell, Lady 

 of the Woods or Orange-tip, and the Orange Field Butterfly or Hedge Brown. 



