118 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



with another epistolary shot; in due time, under date March 17, 1873, 

 came another letter from Couper thus : ' I have purposely delayed a reply 

 to your favor of 2nd, because since its receipt I wrote again to Mr. W. 

 Saunders for the desired information, and my letter was written in terms 

 which could not deter him from answering ; however, no answer has been 

 received.' After receiving this letter, I, of course, concluded that Mr. 

 Saunders' time was of too much value to be encroached upon, and 

 requested Mr. Couper to by no means trouble him again, as his dignified 

 silence at last brought me to a proper sense of my true position, and was 

 a merited punishment to both Couper and myself for our temerity." 



I did receive the two letters referred to from Mr. Couper. In the 

 first, dated Jan. 21, Mr. C. asks me where I obtained the Papilio described 

 as brevicauda, and whether I would loan him a specimen, as he wished to 

 compare it with some Anticosti Papilio's which had been named for him 

 by his U. S. correspondents as P. polyxenes. There were other matters 

 referred to in the letter which I wished to attend to before replying to 

 Mr. Couper, and as I was then extremely busy, and was obliged to leave 

 home for a while, not knowing either that there was any pressing need of 

 an immediate answer, I deferred writing for a time. In the second letter, 

 dated March 3rd, Mr. C. refers again among other matters to P. brevicauda, 

 expresses no disappointment at my not answering his first, does not even 

 now ask for a prompt reply, or hint that any of the information he desires 

 was for anyone but himself. Indeed, after referring to some differences 

 which he thought existed between his Anticosti specimens and my 

 brevicauda from Newfoundland, he says : " It is my intention to investigate 

 this matter further,"' and referred to the opportunities he hoped to have 

 on revisiting the Island. To this second letter I replied as promptly as 

 possible, within a few days, and gave Mr. C. all the information in my 

 power in reference to brevicauda, as well as satisfactory reasons why I had 

 not written sooner. 



It was scarcely kind of Mr. Couper to give me no hint of the terrible 

 state of excitement under which his friend, poor Mr. Strecker, was at that 

 time laboring, boiling over, as he evidently was, with indignation towards 

 one who was perfectly innocent of all knowledge of his wants. Had I 

 known the state of his mind my sympathies would at once have been 

 aroused and I should have written promptly, when I suppose this formid- 

 able bull of his would never have been fulminated against me, and I 

 should have been srared from being impaled on the sharp end of Mr. 



