1942] 
Nearctic N eonympha 
75 
on the red side (for example, the costal yellowish brown of the 
primaries underside in dorothea or the ground color upperside 
in female avicula ), “russet” cannot apply to the pale reddish 
female of dorothea edwardsi , a specimen of which Edwards 
had. “Underside as in male” merely suggests that when Ed- 
wards picked up the fresher female of the two he possessed, a 
henshawi, the general impression he had formed from the in- 
spection of his mixed males was based less on his specimens of 
dorothea , than on those of henshawi. But again, the back of an 
entomologist’s mind is not a very sound basis for the decipher- 
ing of his descriptions, and so a further accumulation of clues 
is necessary. 
In 1887, 11 years later, Edwards, in one of the finest works 
on butterflies ever published, gave a lovely plate illustrating 
his species, the models being a male and female from his collec- 
tion. These are before me as I write and are not dorothea ed- 
wardsi. Except that the termen in the female is perhaps not 
sinuated enough, these figures are admirable. The accompany- 
ing description, which is far superior to the original one, will be 
examined presently. Edwards adds that the resemblance of his 
species to gemma is close in regard to the markings, and de- 
scribes the egg which Doll sent him from Arizona in 1881, but 
which did not hatch (thus leaving us in doubt as to which of 
four possible species laid the dome-shaped turquoise blue ovum 
Edwards figures). In 1891, Charles J. Maynard described 
N. henshawi Edw. (“Henshaw’s Quaker”) as follows: “About 
the size of the type N. euritris , but is more reddish or rusty 
above, a dark band crosses middle of both wings, and there are 
two black dots in middle of outer border. Beneath finely 
marked with minute lines between the common bands. Oh 
outer portion of fore wings there is a wavy band but no spots. 
In the middle of hind wing is a whitish space containing four 
dots in pairs, each with a silver center. Above and below these 
are silver markings.” There is not a shadow of doubt that this 
blunt description refers to the species (though not to the same 
specimen) that Edwards figured, and the humble woodcut 
Maynard gives of the underside of a female right hind wing 
represents that species quite unmistakably — which is a highly 
important moment in the nomenclatorial history of this unfor- 
tunate butterfly, and which would have prevented me, if noth- 
ing else did, from switching the name henshawi to the species 
