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Show 1893.] ME. E. Y. WATSON ON THE HESPEEIID^. 5 importance to Scudder's Hesperidi and Pamphilidi, this latter being an alteration already suggested by Scudder himself. Passing by the arrangement of Plotz, which, being based largely on the pattern of the wings, has been found quite unworkable, and that of Distant, which was a tentative one only intended to be applied to the fauna then under consideration, we come to a valuable paper ' by Speyer on the " Genera of the Hesperiidse of the European Fauna." In this paper he makes a suggestion which has been found of the very greatest importance in the classification of the genera ; this suggestion was to the effect that the position of vein 5 of the fore wing in relation with veins 6 and 4 would probably prove a character of value. This surmise has proved to be correct, and the position of vein 5 has been found of great use in the arrangement of the Hesperiidse, as it has already proved to be for the division of the Heterocera into two large groups of families. In the following arrangement it has been attempted to make mention of every generic name published prior to 1892, and to point out its type species, though, where this species has not been accessible, it has not been possible in most cases to assign the genus to its correct position. This is in great part owing to the very superficial manner in which some, even recent, authors characterize their genera, in many cases doing no more than specifying the species they propose as their type, so that when one is not in possession of that particular species the genus is quite unrecognizable. Whenever no particular species has been designated by tbe author of a genus as his type of that genus, it has been found most satisfactory to follow Scudder's ' Historical Sketch of the Genera of Butterflies,' published in 1875, as in that work he has investigated the history of the genera from the earliest authors, and has fixed the types in accordance with the strictest rules of priority, and therefore in the opinion of the writer his decisions should be accepted by all subsequent authors, w ho will thus have a sound basis to start from, and a uniform system would result instead of the chaos which is caused by each author arbitrarily fixing the type of the genera of earlier authors on a system of his own. The decisions of Mr. Scudder have therefore been accepted for all genera included in the above-quoted work ; while for those genera which have been described subsequently, when no type has been specified, that species has been taken which best agrees with the diagnosis of the genus. In the great majority of genera it has been found practicable to clear tbe wiugs of a specimen of the typical species, whereby its diagnosis has been considerably facilitated. In all, 234 generic names have been dealt with, of which 49 are sunk as synonyms, while 45 new genera have been described, and at least as many more await description in British collections alone. As in tbe British Museum collection the two genera Megathym-nus and AEgiale are arranged in the Heterocera, they are not included below, though some authors consider they should be treated 1 Stett. ent. Zeit. vol. xl. p. 477 et seq. (1879). |