106 
THE entomologist’s RECORD. 
to have to tack these ill-characterised names to our latter-day know- 
ledge, I must own I cannot understand. It may be an interesting study 
to Bibliographists, but practical students want something better than 
these mere hazy indications, and the sooner the whole lot of Hiibners 
(and others’) badly characterised names are thrown away, the better for 
the science. Re Pastor Wallengren’s agreement with Mr. Butler to 
include the whole of the Noctuce TrifidcE in the Bombyces, it is well to 
bear in mind that Pastor Wallengren, like Mr. Butler, knew nothing of 
Dr. Chapman’s recent researches into the structure of Acronycta, and 
each had only the most superficial characters (which Dr. Chapman has 
since shown to be unreliable) to go on. I agree with Mr. Kirby that 
there is a tendency to suppose that “ the study of entomology is fore- 
doomed to hopeless and irretrievable confusion,” but I do not think 
it is in the direction Mr. Kirby fears. As each genus is thoroughly 
worked out and its limits defined, the exclusion of all existent mislead- 
ing names had better be swept away (rather than patched up to make 
them fit) and new ones substituted. Of course it may be hard on 
those who have created endless genera that their names should not go 
down to posterity in the way they anticipated, but I do not see why a 
feeling for Hiibner’s names should prevent Dr. Chapman from sub- 
dividing the genus in the way he finds it necessary to do. — E d.] 
After Mr. Cockerell’s admission in the current number of the British 
Naturalist^ it appears to be a great pity that he did not himself ques- 
tion the propriety of Dr. Chapman’s sub-generic names. At any rate 
it would have relieved Mr. Butler of any suspicion of afiimus. His 
assumptions as to the action of the editor of the Record are possibly 
(and probably) altogether unwarrantable, and Mr. Lewcock seems to 
have measured his arguments at their proper value, although I must 
own my ignorance of an “ Entomological Cocker.” At any rate Mr. 
Cockerell might have learned exactly from the editor of the Record^ 
how far his assumptions were correct or incorrect, and thus have had 
facts for publication. The editor of the British Naturalist^ himself 
suggests that his assistant editor’s ideas would make it “dreadfully 
embarrassing ” for an editor, though the embarrassment is not clear in 
the matter of the Record and the Ent. Mo. Mag.^ where every contributor 
uses his own nomenclature, the editors only adding, in brackets, 
sufficient to make such clear to their ordinary readers. In the E?ito- 
mologist, where an objectionable list is insisted on, and in the British 
Naturalist^ where an attempt is made to keep up the out-of-date 
Doubleday List, trouble may occur, but it is in each case of the editor’s 
own seeking. The editor of the British Naturalist deplores the “con- 
stant and purposeless alterations in nomenclature,” but apparently 
fails to see that, whilst every country on the Continents of Europe 
and America uses Dr. Staudinger and Wocke’s Catalog as a standard of 
nomenclature, we still try to drag on with the old, obsolete Doubleday 
List as a basis for multitudinous dealers’ lists, which appear to be the 
only guide that an average British collector possesses ; and that, as a 
more or less intelligent collector gets beyond the contents of his out-of- 
date Stainton’s Manual and Newman’s British Moths, and tries to 
come up level with Continental thought, he has to break himself free 
from the trammels that his isolation has begotten, and re-learn some of 
the names that have long ago been proved erroneous, and about which 
