73 



NATURAL SCIENCE 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress. 



No. 60. Vol. X. FEBRUARY, 1897. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



" — OLOGisTS " versus "Collectors." 



CONTRIBUTORS to our contemporary, The Entomologist, have 

 lately been discussing the somewhat academic question whether 

 one who does " not make his collecting entirely subservient to the 

 elucidating of scientific problems " is or is not " worthy of the name of 

 Entomologist." The answer obviously depends on what one means 

 by " entomologist." If entomology is, as its derivation implies, the 

 "science of insects," then an entomologist must be "a scientific 

 student of insects " ; and one who collects insects for the sake of 

 turning an honest penny, or of putting them in picture-frames over the 

 mantel-piece, or of quietly gloating over their beauty as a miser over 

 his gold, or even — still as a miser — of making a larger collection than 

 his neighbours, — such a one may be an excellent father or a model 

 parishioner, but is assuredly no entomologist. 



The discussion, however, has not been altogether barren. The 

 fact has been insisted on, just as we have of late been forced to insist 

 on it, that a collector need not necessarily be possessed of great 

 erudition to enable him to do honest and useful work. The field- 

 naturalist and the amateur are in a far better position for doing 

 valuable work than is the average professional scientific man — tied to 

 a museum workroom or a lecturer's table. But, unfortunately, the 

 collector in so many cases does not do good work : he collects without 

 observing ; he cares for the name, not for the nature, of his newest 

 find. It is the collector to whom the museum and laboratory 

 naturalists look for valuable and essential information concerning the 

 material with which they have to deal ; but when they so often look 

 in vain, can we wonder at an occasional grumble ? 



We have been accused of late in various quarters, by individuals 

 and by some publications whose opinion we value, of attacking 

 systematists, of attacking field-geologists, of attacking amateurs, of 

 attacking state-paid officials, of attacking collectors, of attacking 



