Page:Jardine Naturalist's Library Foreign Butterflies.djvu/81

Rh and urbicolæ; the former having the wings marked with obscure spots, the latter for the most part with transparent spots.

In his earlier works, Mantissa and Species, Fabricius made no important change on the Linnæan method; but the many additional species which had come to his knowledge when he drew up his Systema glossatarum, led him to establish many new genera, and remodel the arrangement of the old ones. This method consists of forty-one genera, most of which have been adopted by subsequent authors; but it is less complete than it might otherwise have been rendered, owing to the death of the author before it was finished. Latreille did not deviate materially from the Fabrician method, adopting nearly all the genera; but he did not derive the distinctive characters exclusively from the antennæ and palpi, as the Danish entomologist had done, but had recourse to other parts of structure, and likewise judiciously took into account the peculiarities of the caterpillar and chrysalis. Several arrangements were proposed subsequent to or contemporaneous with that of Latreille, such as those of Lamarck, Dumeril, Dalman, &c. but most of them are of little importance. The last mentioned individual, however, appears to have been the first to apply to actual practice, in his description of the lepidoptera of Sweden, characters derived from the neuration of the wings, the value of which were first pointed out by Mr. Jones, in a paper in the Linnæan Transactions, published in 1794. Godart., [sic]