220 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OP 



does not consider them of any value in a natural system. It seems strange 

 that any one, especially M. Guenee, could entertain such an opinion, when a 

 slight amount of study is sufficient to convince any naturalist, that there is 

 no severer test to be applied to a system than the construction of synopses 

 containing exclusive categories founded on structure. Groups agreeing most 

 closely are brought into direct contrast, and if the most trivial and unimpor- 

 tant structural peculiarities, except in the case of genera, are called into 

 "requisition to distinguish them, whatever may be their comprehensiveness, is 

 not the fact very strongly suggestive of want of naturalness, nay, of purely 

 artificial, arbitrary distinctions, produced by the desire to create differences 

 where there are none actually in nature ? But even admitting they are 

 formed on a purely artificial basis, and that all synopses are essentially artifi- 

 cial, need the fact in the character of a simple index to systematic concep- 

 tions, in any manner affect the most natural arrangement of the group in the 

 text ? And could there be any better system than that which unites the 

 convenience of the one to the truthfulness of the other ? 



One of the chief objects in systematic and descriptive works certainly ought 

 to be, a ready and certain recognition of groups and individuals ; and to facili- 

 tate this, no care or labor bestowed on synopses intended to promote this 

 object and prevent loss of time to the inquirer, can be regarded as superfluous 

 or as a tax on authorship. The world is thus the gainer in economy of time, 

 and science is more rapidly advanced. And surely, when one reflects how few 

 there are who devote themselves to scientific study, the additional labor thus 

 expended by the author carries into the future the most fruitful results. It 

 is the neglect of the synoptical system that has converted, even at the present 

 day, the great majority of entomologists everywhere into a class of mere col- 

 lectors and picture-recognizers, and which calls for a profuseness of illustra- 

 tion to be met with in no other department of Natural History. And on the 

 other hand, its tendency is to institute, if indeed it has not already done so, 

 an Egyptian priesthood over nature, in that body of European " authorities" 

 skilled in the interpretation of its hieroglyphics, and who furnish students 

 with a complicated, skeleton method, all of whose details they must painfully 

 acquire, before they can in the humblest degree, aspire to question systematic 

 nature for themselves. How laborious, time consuming and discouraging 

 this is to the American student, who has "no authority" to consult, save the 

 ambiguous phrases of diagnoses, no classified collections to study, and by 

 the comparison of forms to educate his perceptive powers in generic and family 

 differences, cannot be appreciated by those who have all these aids, and who 

 are the heirs to almost hereditary entomological lore and collections, handed 

 down from one generation to another. 



The times, however, demand of MM. Guenee and Boisduval a system of con- 

 venient study. The former, it is true, attempts to meet this demand by 

 separating the portion of the order of which he treats, first, into divisions, and 

 these into tribes, and these again into families ; but scattered as they are 

 through the body of the work, or through several volumes, this complication 

 of arrangement is far from fulfilling the needs of the student. It is not 

 natural, and is therefore perplexing, and has caused the author to mistake 

 well marked groups within families, for families themselves, or even higher 

 divisions. When the individual structure of two beings placed in different, 

 sometimes widely separated families, approach so intimately that they can be 

 distinguished only by resort to trivial characters, what more conclusive proof 

 of artificiality, and mere brain and paper-created distinctions, can the natu- 

 ralist desire ? 



The elaborate description of groups is a highly commendable trait in a sys- 

 tematic work. They should be, however, merely a confirmation of the results 

 attainable by the study of synopses of characters, all the categories of which 

 are rigidly exclusive and markedly characteristic ot the groups they desig- 



[June, 



