April, '02] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 



99 



it all long before, but he had allowed an error to be perpetuated 

 in our literature and he had allowed the younger students to 

 flounder on through the same morass he had successfully 

 breasted years before, and which a word from him would have- 

 saved them from. 



All of our greater authorities should be constant contributors 

 to our magazines. Most of them are not. They are to say 

 why. Most of them are more or less concentrated on great 

 works, but they owe it to us to report on the very numerous 

 secondary results that have always come as a by-product- 

 results often of greatest interest and value. Talk with any of 

 them and you will find them perfect storehouses of knowledge 

 which ought not to remain buried and die with them. They 

 may consider it undignified to publish detached results, but I 

 am sure it is not so. Over and above this consideration, we 

 need, secondarily, their criticism. 



Our journals are full of the work of younger students and it 

 all passes current without remark. Incomplete work or er- 

 roneous conclusions, often known to be such by the older 

 authorities, frequently receive no further attention than a shrug 

 of the shoulders. They might give us what we need while 

 they dispose of the after-dinner cigar. We need criticism- 

 honest, kindly criticism that hews clean to the line. There 

 are fifteen or twenty men in this country who might raise our 

 standard in connection with entomological work far above what 

 it is with very little cost to themselves, but to the very material 

 enrichment of our entomological literature. 



And yet there are others who will pass from us, carrying 

 with them many of their hard-earned results, which they might 

 just as well receive credit for, which would be of inestimable 

 working value to younger students, and which the bury in- of 

 will but leave to be all done over again. 



I might refer, for one instance, to the matter of secondary 

 sexual characters. It is a subject of the very highest biological 

 interest and importance, yet the facts concerning it, as relate 

 to American insects, are almost wholly buried either in technical 

 descriptions or the minds of the older authorities who h. 

 studied special groups for many years. I wish a book mi-lit 



