ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS 



PHILADELPHIA, PA., JULY, 1920. 



LABELS ON SPECIMENS. 



Insects at the present time have so many relationships to 

 other objects that it is important to know the exact locality 

 and date of capture of a given specimen. The altitude and 

 any other available information is also important for proper 

 study and the altitude should also be given, when not readily 

 ascertainable from other sources. These days few of us are 

 satisfied with a specimen without locality and "Africa" or the 

 "East Indies" hardly suffices. The museum curator has 

 many troubles in regard to data. Specimens come to us 

 without data, with insufficient data and with inaccurate 

 dates and localities. Often the writing on the labels or 

 papers is only translatable by the person writing them and 

 possibly not even by the one writing them. In papered 

 specimens it is a great convenience to have the data on each 

 paper so that they may be arranged in various boxes system- 

 atically, to be spread at a later date. 



The rule should be to place on each specimen or each 

 papered specimen, the exact locality, date of caoture, alti- 

 tude and name of the collector, and any or all data should 

 be legibly written and if you can't write legibly print them. 

 The name of the month should be written in full or expressed in 

 Roman numerals, otherwise there is uncertainty and trouble. 

 When the collector is spending days or weeks in the field, 

 time may be saved by dating specimens and keeping a com- 

 bined itinerary and diary and adding full data when there is 

 more leisure. It is by no means uncommon for authors and 

 collectors to give the names of obscure places, omitting the 

 country, and thus making it difficult and wasteful of time to 

 find out whence came the specimens. There are few of us 

 that know where all the towns, villages and hamlets of the 

 world are located and it is a double disappointment not to 

 find some of these names in the gazetteer or on the map. 



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