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Psyche 1:9, 1874.

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PSYCHE.
ORGAN OF THE CAMBRIDGE ENTOMOLOGICAL CLUB. EDITED BY 33. PICKMAN MANN.
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Vol. I.] Cambridge, Mass., July, 1874. [No. 3. -
Vernacular Names for Butterflies.
IT may be that' in England the native species of all classes of birds, butterflies, and flowers (and, I trust, of fishes like- wise) have received tommon English names. My experience is that in continental countries of Europe a great many species, such as come under most frequent obser- vation of the public, have their common names and often three or four different names at a time, each according to provincialisms. A popular name of a fish is of acknowledged utility in a market, and could not be very well supplanted by a scientific one, yet without their scientific names being as- certained, there would be little comparison possible between markets West and East and those of Europe. The popular name under which a plant or butterfly is known cannot but have a charm even for a scientific searcher, and ought to be remembered by him and promulgated in print. But his task is to popularize science by utilizing such names, and by them to lead amateurs to awaken to the advantages of scientific nomenclature as one that is not provincial, nor exclusively English, but cosmological.
Amateurs cannot possibly take much interest until they begin to bring things into groups by their own observations of similarities, and later with scientific assistance into genera. I want to have genuine popular names (be they ever so local, as "Camberwell Beauty" for a butterfly that ranges all over Europe and over America to California) distinguished from names that are created more or less arbitrarily, or by merely translating scientific double names into the vernacular. The adoption and promulgation of these latter ones seems to me of very doubtful policy, as they do not harmonize with the originally popular names and may create, in an amateur's Psirhe 1 WI-10 (pre.1903) hfp //psyche aitclub org/I/1.OOOO1) html



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mind, a greater difficulty of grouping the specimens. A White Mountain butterfly (par excellence), a dull-eyed and a blue-eyed Grayling, an arctic Satyr, &c., &c., and Camber- well Beauty would lead soon to misunderstandings which could not be disentangled.
With reference to the latter, I ask, who here would willing- ly adopt such a name for the Antiopa of California? ! Every person from Germany greets it here as b6Trauermantel" (mourning cloak), and may ask, perhaps, how is it called in English ? Could I answer? So with bbAtalanta." The - same as at home. our "Admiral??" How shall I name for them our five Papiliones, whom they all know as "Swallow- tails ?'Pliilenor I name for them the green Swallow-tail. Finally, let us remember and always print the "popular" names, as a by-gift, but let us abstain from trying to create popular names, if it were even by translating the whole of Kirby's Catalogue into the vernacular.
To show that I myself am a lover of popular names, to which I always lend an attentive ear, I make free to add these following genuine ones, and to ask permission to report more from time to time, when memory serves me : British Blondes, for the two Coenonymphas ; Buckeye, for Junonia Cosnia.
James Behrens.
English Names for Butterflies.
(Continued from pa9e 3.)
9. Dcriicms Plexippus.- The Monarch.
D'Urban calls it the Storm Fritillary, but it is not a Fritillary. Gosse
called it the Archippus, but tiis is not its proper name. It is one of the largest of our butterflies, and rules a vast domain. 10. Basilarchia Disippe. - The Viceroy.
This name is suggested from its mimicry of the preceding species. 11. Baailarchia Astyanax.- he red-spotted Purple. This name was proposed by Gosse.
12. Basilarchia Arthemis.- The banded Purple. Also proposed by Gosse.
13. Boxocopa Herse.- The tawny Emperor.
The species of this group are termed- Emperors in England. 14. Polygonkt interrogationis.- The Violet-tip. A name well proposed by Gosse.




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