278 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



will, of necessity, cause some change and shifting of names. I am led 

 to say further, that no students have travelled so much to make com- 

 parisons as have the Americans. Grote, Fernald, Hulst and others, as 

 well as myself, have visited all the European collections — some of us 

 more than once — and have spent dollars, pounds, francs and marks in 

 painful number to gain that broad knowledge for which we are now 

 dubbed " pseudo-savants." 



Now, I doubt whether I would have imposed all this upon the 

 readers of the Canadian Entomologist except as a sort of introduction 

 to another point, which the following quotation from a correspondent's 

 letter will make clear : " In sending specimens to be determined in the 

 customary way (the namer to have the privilege of retaining any speci- 

 mens he may desire), if I send a species new to our fauna, does custom 

 require its return to the sender, or is the recipient to keep, name and 

 describe it— i. e., steal it bodily? " The italics are as in the original. 



Now, how many persons who have asked that same question, and 

 who have found fault with the answer, ever really understand what they 

 are asking when they send in a box of insects numbering anywhere from 

 25 to 250 specimens for determination to one who is under no sort of 

 obligation to do it ? 



First, they draw upon a store of knowledge that has been acquired 

 by over twenty years of study ; they demand the time necessary to make 

 comparisons, to unpack, repack, often the replacement of a defective 

 outer box or a new cover ; very often the payment of return postage, 

 almost always the payment of correspondence postage. Second, they 

 often expect comments or information concerning the species, its rarity, 

 value, larva or its life-history, and other matters too numerous to mention. 



And in return for all this, what do they offer ? In many cases noth- 

 ing at all ; but rather claim it as a right ; in other cases, permission to- 

 retain such as they have in duplicate ! 



I have frequently spent a solid half day naming a box of specimens 

 in which there was not a single example that was of use to me ! I need 

 hardly say that I could have found more profitable employment for my 

 time. In Noctuids, the collection under my charge at New Brunswick is, 

 perhaps excepting that of the U. S. National Museum, the most com- 

 plete in the country. Of the Eastern and Central U. S. species, not a 

 dozen are lacking ; but that dozen I need badly. Once or twice each 

 year, out of hundreds of species that pass through my hands, I find one 



