73 



VARIATION IN EUROPEAN LEPIDOPTERA. 



By W. F. DE VISMES KANE, M.A., M.R.I.A., 



Sloperto7i, Kin^s/owJi, Dnhlin ; Member of the Enfotnological Society of London ; ^c. 



(An Address delivered in connection with the Barnsley Naturalists' Society's 

 Exhibition, INIarch, 1884.) 



The subject is one of great interest and very wide scope, and might 

 well occupy a lifetime of laborious scrutiny and observation. I hope 

 that I may be the means of opening new avenues of thought to some 

 whose field of study has been perhaps necessarily confined to our 

 British fauna, and even in a great degree to that of the portion of 

 the country in which they dwell. Not that I would presume for 

 a moment to undervalue or depreciate the results of the researches 

 of those whose intelligence and industry reflect such honour on the 

 various local societies throughout the country. I refer to that class 

 of observers whose occupations leave them scant opportunities for 

 natural history investigations ; but it is the part of those who have 

 leisure, and the opportunities of travel, to supplement particular 

 observations by deduction, generalization, and analysis. 



Thus it is that the schoolboy may take his share in the construc- 

 tion of the temple of science, and the hard-working artisan (as in the 

 case of the Scotch naturalist Edward, and others), as well as the busy 

 professional man, may recreate their energies, whether in the field or 

 the study, each striving in his way to extend our perception, and 

 widen our grasp of the infinite wisdom and goodness of the Great 

 Creator. 



My subject needs, in the first place, definition. 



From one point of view there is no such thing as variation of 

 species ; since the most rigid and painstaking scrutiny of Nature leads 

 little by UttlC; slowly but inevitably, it seems to me, to the conclusion 

 that there is no such thing as species, if we mean by the term a 

 primeval type which has permanent and unaltered persistence of 

 characteristics. But if we define a species to be a group, similar 

 among themselves throughout their fife-history and sexual develop- 

 ment, with a common inherited characteristic difference in some stage 

 of that development from all other groups of individuals, we then 

 can fix upon types of sufficient permanence to render of great interest 

 all records of their variation, since such records will in many cases 

 eventually constitute the history of fresh species. 



It is with regard to such alterations of characteristics, giving birth 

 to incipient species, that my remarks will apply ; and I would point out 

 how valuable and accessible a field for study of natural phenomena 

 is presented by Entomology, offering as it does for examination a class 



Nov. 1884. E 



