84 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS [Mar., '22 



ticcps fits LeConte's type of laticcps better than does the orig- 

 inal diagnosis. I have in my collection specimens from San 

 Pedro, California, the type locality of angnsticeps, which are 

 unquestionably the same thing, and which show conclusively 

 that angusticeps is an absolute synonym of the LeContean 

 species. 



Here the responsibility for the synonym rests, 1 think, not 

 so much upon the rather trifling inexactness of the old Latin 

 diagnosis, as upon the failure to allow for this in the face of 

 the prinm facie probability that the San Diego type and the 

 nearby San Pedro specimens were specifically identical. As a 

 perfectly true generalization we may say that every description, 

 no matter how carefully drawn up, is in some degree inadequate, 

 or as my friend Banks more strongly put it during a recent 

 conversation at the Museum, -"descriptions never can be relied 

 upon." That there is a very large kernel of truth in this some- 

 what epigrammatic statement must be evident when we reflect 

 that no two taxonomists would describe the same insect in the 

 same way or in precisely equivalent terms ; nor on the other 

 hand would a given description convey precisely the same 

 meaning to two different individuals, or even to the same in- 

 dividual under different conditions, the interpretation as well as 

 the description depending upon general experience, degree of 

 familiarity with the group in question, and that very real but 

 indefinite bias known as the personal equation, not to mention 

 certain other incidental factors which may further color the 

 views of the individual. 



All this of course is perfectly well known, and yet its entire 

 disregard in some quarters coupled with a tendency to magnify 

 into specific characters the inevitable more or less trifling in- 

 dividual or local variations to which all organic species are 

 subject, is burdening our literature with a mass of useless 

 names which serve only to further obstruct and befog an 

 already difficult pathway. Since of the making of species as 

 "of the making of many books there is no end," we should at 

 least see to it that our creations rest on reasonably secure 

 foundations, lest we give further cause for the mental reserva- 

 tion which a glance at the new check list excites in most of us, 

 best expressed perhaps by the misquotation of a truth there 

 are fewer things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in 

 our philosophy. 



