On the Impediments to the Study of Natural History. 327 



for fear of destroying the specimen ; a very natural remark 

 to make, and obviously applicable in nine cases out of ten, 

 where of course the captor of a rare or to him unknown in- 

 sect, would hesitate in destroying a specimen which he might 

 not easily, if ever, have an opportunity of replacing. 



We need not be surprised to find, when contending with 

 these obscure and vague distinctions, that the most experi- 

 enced entomologists are themselves bewildered ; and conse- 

 quently, in the arrangement of their cabinets and catalogues are 

 not unfrequently in the habit of inserting the same insect under 

 different genera or divisions. Sometimes it is aBombyx, then a 

 Noctua, then a Geometra, or a Phalcetia, or some other minor 

 subclassified title, according to the ever varying or vexatiously 

 indeterminate state of scientific arrangement. My last, but 

 though last, not least charge is, respecting the extreme arbi- 

 trariness and wantonness of appellation, whether with re- 

 ference to the higher or subordinate divisions. Let it not be 

 said that on Linna?us the guilt devolves ; that in classing his 

 Papilios he made them into t Greeks and Trojans, associ- 

 ated them with the Muses, the numerous progeny of Danaus 

 and Egyptus, or the presiding nymphs of the classic world. 

 Call it fanciful if we please, or an aberration from sound sense. 

 Still we can forgive a fanciful deviation from rigid rules, or 

 pardon him for that method in his madness, which after all 

 afforded something like a clue, of which every disciple who 

 has had the benefit of a classical education might avail him- 

 self, associating the lighter study with the deeply- instilled 

 lessons of his early days. Neither do I feel inclined to utter 

 a syllable in the shape of railing accusation against those 

 definitions, however harsh or crabbed, which can be yet made 

 intelligible, by any obvious reference to any dead or living 

 language, or whose etymology is rendered tangible by an asso- 

 ciation with habits, colours, or other characteristics of the 

 object to be described. All I war against is, that unmeaning, 

 bewildering and heterogeneous assemblage of appellations, 

 from which no information can with the utmost stretch of inge- 

 nuity be derived, possessing all the objections to the Linnaean 

 terms and phraseology, without their beauty and method. 

 Take for instance, the following genera of British Papiliones: 

 1. Papilio; 2. Gonopteryx; 3. Colias; 4. Pontia; 5. Leuco- 

 phasia ; 6. Pieris ; 7. Dioritis ; 8. Nemebius ; 9. Melitaea ; 

 10. Argynnis ; 11. Vanessa; 12. Cynthia; 13. Apatura; 

 14-. Limenitis; 15. Hipparchia ; 16. Thecla; 17. Lycaena; 

 18. Polyommatus ; 19. Thymele; 20. Pamphila. Of these, 

 with the exception of the 1st, 2nd, 5th, and 18th, it would 



be 



