106 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



era in the Trans. Am. Ent. Soc, and other pubHcations, exhibits a num- 

 ber still larger. How were so many originated ? and, Have they any 

 value ? are questions that it may not be unprofitable to briefly consider. 

 As to their origin, it may be asked : Are they descriptions of the same 

 forms made by different writers in ignorance of what had previously been 

 done ? or, of forms that at the time were regarded as distinct, but after- 

 wards, by connecting links, seen to be but variations within specific 

 limits ? or, from mistaken identification and other causes ? The history 

 of American Coleopterology shows all these to have been factors in vary- 

 ing quantities. Before the year 1824, no description of any species (so 

 far as known) had been published on this side of the Atlantic ; but, for 

 more than one hundred years previously, large numbers had from time to 

 time been taken over and described in every country of Europe, many of 

 them several times by as many names. The works of these various 

 describers were mostly unknown or inaccessible to American students of 

 that period, so that when Mr. Thomas Say, the founder of this branch of 

 Entomology here, undertook the description of our species at the year 

 mentioned, it was" often impossible for him to know what had been done 

 abroad. Haldeman, Melsheimer and others thus continued the work till 

 1844, they and the Europeans making synonyms reciprocally, in ignor- 

 ance of what each had done. About this time appeared a talented, 

 scholarly, enthusiastic young man, who, on seeing so many of " our finest 

 insects going to Europe for names," with Juvenal exclaimed, " Siccwn 

 jecur ardeat ira" and forthwith the immortal Leconte devoted his life (as 

 he informs us) "to the classification and naming of American Coleoptera, 

 even at the risk of creating much synonymy." How well he did his 

 work needs not to be told to the Coleopterological world of either hemi- 

 sphere. The synonymy made proves to be much below what might have 

 been reasonably anticipated. Mr. S. Henshaw in his Index gives, to that 

 time, the number of species named by Dr. Leconte as 4,734, to which is 

 to be added 80 published posthumously — in all, 4,814. Of these only 

 864 were considered synonyms, and 188 as races or varieties. This kind 

 of synonymy may be termed re-descriptive, and with proper care and a 

 judicious restraint on haste, but little of it should be made with us 

 hereafter. 



A second source of synonymy arose from tlie descriptions of certain 

 forms as distinct, that differed so much from the assumed type^perhaps 

 in size, ornamentationj or even structure — as to seem different, but subse- 



