THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 47 



and detailed to be useful. It may, perhaps, be answered that most of the 

 species aie not collected by the writers themselves, and the collectors sent 

 no exact localities. Probably not, but were they asked for them ? Col- 

 lectors will supply proper localities, and often very interesting details if 

 they are given to understand that these are wanted — as is plainly evident 

 from the fact, that some few careful authors always manage to know where 

 their species come from, and a good deal about them besides. 



My own idea in the matter is, that every description of new species 

 ought, if possible, to have the collector's own notes appended thereto, so 

 that we might have some idea of what the living insect was like, and not 

 only have an account of its dried remains impaled on a pin. Fancy, if 

 someone undertook to write an account of the human race, founded en- 

 tirely upon information obtained in the post-mortem room and anatomical 

 museums ! But, if we cannot have biological notes, let us at least have 

 localities — they can be got when they are wanted, and indeed, I have 

 known some instances in which names of localities have been duly sent 

 in, but never mentioned by the describing author. 



Sometimes authors take it for granted that because they write from a 

 certain place, it will be understood that the species were captured there, 

 but I could easily demonstrate that such an assumption, in all cases in 

 which the locality is not given, would lead us into quite ridiculous errors, 

 and this being so, how are we to discriminate ? One usually precise 

 author, who has described a very large number of new species of late 

 years, has given for most of them only the name of the state in which he 

 resides, and for many no locality at all. Now, according to Packard, this 

 state embraces two distinct Zoo-geographical regions, so it becomes of 

 especial importance to know exactly where the insects in question came 

 from. So I wrote to this author, expostulating with him on this point, 

 and he replied that he quite agreed with me that localities should be 

 properly defined, and all the species I alluded to were to be understood 

 to come from the vicinity of the town in which he resided. Now, this is 

 excellent, provided that the lacking or indefinite localities are so under- 

 stood 3 but on the face of it, until I had this information from the author, 

 this fact was not always evident. Perhaps it has been stated somewhere 

 in his writings ; but this hardly betters matters for the student, who 

 naturally takes one paper at a time, and considers it on its own merits, 

 unless referred back to previous remarks bearing upon it. 



Fortunately, there are some systematists who do appreciate the value 



