THE bEStRtJCTlON OF INSECTS. 299 



can be obtained. If physiological theories cannot be worked out 

 without a great sacrifice of insect life, regrettable as it may be, the 

 sacrifice must be made, even to the extent of experimenting on living 

 insects. On this subject I do not see that we can do more than 

 express the confident hope that scientists will not be more destructive 

 than is necessary, and that their researches and discoveries will lead 

 them, and the rest of the world who learn from them, more and more 

 to appreciate and interest themselves in creatures whose economy 

 they have been investigating. 



The other matter, that of the extinction of rare and local species, 

 may appear the most practical and urgent point to be considered in 

 this connection. That many scarce species, and especially local 

 insects, are surely and even rapidly on their way to final disappearance, 

 will hardly be questioned. As to the causes of this process, there 

 may be more controversy. It is enough for me, however, that dealers 

 and entomologists unsparingly ravage these species, and take them in 

 such large numbers as must inevitably tend to make them sensibly 

 and continually scarcer, whether this over-collecting can account for 

 the whole phenomenon or not. 



For dealers, whose murderous raids have seriously thinned colonies of 

 many local species {Sesia r/iri/sidifonnis, amongst others, at 

 Folkestone),* there is much excuse. It is their living, their business, 

 and it can hardly be expected that considerations of science or senti- 

 ment should stand against the exigencies of wage-earning. There 

 ought not, of course, to be such a thing as a dealer in insects (I am 

 not speaking of makers of apparatus) ; but that there are such things 

 is the fault, not of these " naturalists " themselves, but of entomo- 

 logists who make them possible by encouraging the trade. 



Look at it any way we may, entomologists are themselves the 

 greatest sinners. With most of them the only rule as to local species 

 and varieties seems to be to leave nothing they can take away. 

 Looking over a few back nixmbers of the Entoiiwlniiist, I find one 

 collector has taken fifty-one Sjihin.r ronrolndi in less than a month, 

 while another has taken seventeen Sphin.r innastri imagines in one 

 year, and boasts one hundred of the larvae. Then I see at least one 

 hundred CalUmorpha Jwra have been taken in one locality in a single 

 season, forty-eight of these going to a single individual. 



I do not mention names, as I have no desire to pillory individuals 

 who are probably no worse than others who, if they did not take as 

 many, doubtless, like Alice's "carpenter," took as many as they could 

 get. But one name I may refer to as going to illustrate my point that it is 

 not merely unscientific " fly-catchers " who are to blame in this matter. 

 We have a scientist like Mr. Frohawk, complaining {Entojiinhu/ist, 

 September, 1892) of the editor of the Fidil because he will not specify 

 in more precise terms than " N. Kent," the locality where Aporia 

 cratarifiif had been taken during the season, and that, too, in spite of a 

 significant hint of the editor that " others were left to continue the 



*We should be surprised to learn that S. (7/r!/.»/rit/br»((s has been seriously thinned 

 at Folkestone. In 1893 and 1894 we have reason to believe that it was as abundant 

 as usual. — Ed. 



\ There is, of course, good reason for this. It is well known that A. crataegi is 

 extinct as British, that it has recently been planted out in many places, and it is 

 the duty of every entomologist to attempt to explain recent appearances. — Ed. 



