THE INFLUENCE OF DARWIN UPON ENTOMOLOGY. 75 



of publication for these monographs and partly to the appropriate 

 channel alibrded by the Society, which first gave natural selection to 

 the world in 1858, but it probably also indicates that the Ento- 

 mological Society was not at that date exactly a congenial home for 

 the free discussion and subsequent publication of such hypotheses. I 

 well remember, about the year 1875, when I was an undergraduate, the 

 gravity and, indeed, almost consternation with which Professor West- 

 wood, when he enquired what I was studying, received my reply 

 that I was reading the Orujin of Specief<. He told me that it was a 

 book which so young a man ought not to read except under the most 

 careful guidance, and he seemed to think that there was some failure 

 of duty or, at any rate, some want of caution in my being allowed to 

 have the book all ! 



The great change in relation to these opmions which has gradually 

 come over the Society and over British entomology generally is espe- 

 cially due to the energy, zeal, and ability of a single man. Darwin 

 described Huxley as his " general agent " ; in relation to entomology 

 his agent was Raphael Meldola. He became a member of the Society 

 in 1872, was elected on the Council in 1874 and 1875, becoming 

 Secretary in 1876, an office which he retained till 1880. In 1884 he 

 was a Vice-President, and on the Council in 1885. During the whole 

 of this period he was unremitting in his efforts to interest the Society 

 in evolution and natural selection as applied to the problems of insect 

 life and structure. Darwin received many letters from Dr. Fritz 

 Miiller containing most interesting and suggestive observations. These 

 were translated by Meldola and brought before the Society. In 1879 

 he brought before the Society, and published in the I'niceedinijs (p. xx), 

 a translation of Fritz Miiller's paper, which had only just appeared in 

 Knsiiius (May, 1879, p. 100), making known his suggestion as to the 

 reason for resemblances between protected species in the hypothesis 

 Avhich has since been known as Miillerian mimicry, or the hypothesis 

 of common warning or synaposematic colours. This new sug- 

 gestion he sustained even against H. W. Bates, who had himself 

 suggested the older theory of mimicry, and later against W. L. 

 Distant. In 1882 (Ann. Mwj. Nat. Hist., Dec.) he extended the 

 suggestion to explain broader resemblances between the species of 

 distasteful groups generally. The outcome of his energy has been that 

 the Miillerian suggestion has produced far more effect here than in its 

 native country, and that the natural centre for controversy for the 

 discussion of such questions shifted from the Linnean to the Ento- 

 mological Society. In 1882 Meldola published a translation of Weis- 

 mann's Studies i)i the Theory of Descent, which had also been brought 

 before his notice by Darwin, who, indeed, suggested the English 

 edition. This work has strong personal interest to the present writer 

 inasmuch as it was the cause of his gradual absorption in the problems 

 of insect bionomics, and abandonment of the histological researches on 

 the lower mammalia upon which he had up to that time been engaged. 



When we enquire as to the effect produced by these changes upon 

 the direction and scope of entomological enquiry, the answer is both 

 interesting and in many ways curious and unexpected. The result 

 has been a return of the spirit which animated the older enquirers 

 before zoological science became locked fast in the paralysing grip of 

 pure systematics. "When we read Reaumur or De Gear, the whole 



