io8 The Field Naturalist's Quarterly May 



even in the cause of science. The time, I sincerely believe, 

 will come when private collections will be a thing of the 

 past, as indeed they are already becoming in London, and 

 when all scientists will expect to find in the national collec- 

 tion in the British Museum, if not in the museum of their 

 own towns, sufficient material respecting their own partic- 

 ular study to satiate the most exacting. 



In i8g6 a well-versed entomologist computed the number 

 of British insects alone to be nearly 15,000 distinct kinds, 

 and no doubt remains that this estimate is decidedly under 

 rather than over the truth. 



I mention this here because one is tempted by the swarm- 

 ing horde abroad on this May morning to imagine that 

 their name is legion, and that no computation of their num- 

 bers is possible ; but by far the majority, at least in Britain, 

 is classified and known. It is useless to indicate where to 

 look for insects in spring ; they are, as Edward Newman 

 has said, found "not only from the topmost twigs of the 

 tallest trees to the very surface of the earth on which we 

 tread, but also above the trees — far, far above the tree-tops, 

 even in the air itself: far, far below the surface of the earth, 

 even in the deep caverns, dark and dank, which seem 

 thoroughly designed for avenues of another world." 



Still, most insects, when we come down to individualise, 

 have their favourite haunts, many of them as curious as 

 they are unexpected. Who would look for rare beetles run- 

 ning about the edges of brackish ditches and pools near the 

 sea-shore, yet never entering the water nor roaming far 

 from its margin ; or again, living out an apparently desolate 

 existence in the tombs of our ancestors, blind where no 

 light comes, yet carrying out all the functions of their state 

 as fully and exactly as does the most frivolous butterfly or 

 demurest dormouse ? But it is upon the open moor, in 

 the voiceful woods and the fragrant meadow-lands, that in- 

 sects most do congregate ; and one naturally wonders 

 " whence came all this glorious band." A large number of 

 them, as I pointed out in our February issue, have hidden 

 their beauty away in deep places during the dark days of 

 winter, and are now crept forth to the renewed heat of 

 spring to complete their life's work of reproduction, which 



