198 
THE BUTTERFLIES OF BORNEO. 
refrain as far as possible from lengthy discursions on 
questions of nomenclature. Numerous footnotes indicate 
that this latter temptation has been too much for me in 
many instances. The object of my list is primarily to 
enable anyone to identify a Bornean butterfly, and to 
invest it with its full and most up to date title. 
It is a melancholy fact that some of our most conspicuous 
and unmistakable species should suffer a continual change 
of name; thus, first, the generic name is altered, then 
the specific name goes, then perhaps another generic 
name appears, followed by a revival of the older specific 
name. For a few years the student congratulates himself 
on stability at last, and then comes a subspecific name to 
remember, which is no sooner published than shown to be 
synonymous with some other form, which also bears 
another name. 
I have departed from the usual method of writing tri¬ 
nomials by inserting the name of the author of the specific 
name as well as that of the subspecific name. 
In recording the geographical distribution of each form, 
I have given first Borneo and any other country in which 
that identical subspecies occurs, separated by a semicolon 
from other countries in which different subspecies or races 
of that same species occur. 
A glance through the list indicates one very obvious fact, 
namely that the three countries, Borneo, Sumatra and the 
Malay Peninsula, have a very large number of forms common 
to all three, and at the same time well separated from allied 
forms in neighbouring countries. For these three countries 
I propose to introduce the collective name “ Neomalaya.” 
The former connection of the three countries as one land 
mass is geologically a comparatively recent event, and on 
that account forms the explanation of the above faunistic 
relation. Similarly, their long separation from Burma in 
the north, Java in the south, and the Philippines in the 
north-east accounts for the comparatively distant relation¬ 
ship between the forms of those countries and those of 
Neomalaya. 
Wallace called attention to this peculiarity long ago, but 
subsequent writers have been inclined to modify his out¬ 
spoken words. Perhaps the latest modification is that of 
Fruhstorfer, who introduces the term “ Macromalayana ” 
to distinguish the Malay Peninsula and the three Greater 
Sunda Isles. Now, to my mind the fauna of Java is just 
as distinct from that of the Malay Peninsula as is that of 
