AND DISTRIBUTE INSECT VAUIETY. 7 



insular fauna, and the extreme unlikelihood of the discovery of 

 any new species, will sooner or later insensibly seek to extend his 

 views to the remarkable races and sub-races of insects that occur 

 elsewhere ; or, if he have leisure, employ himself in biographies 

 of the little entities around, or seek to understand their place in 

 the eartVs history.'^ To many economic entomology is one 

 great inducement to this result; the vernal Canker-worm in 

 the sweet-scented rose and " Pug " in the snowy apple petals ; 

 the moths secretly destroying our embroidered hangings, and per- 

 forating \vind-f alien apples and dessert-figs ; the Cheese-hoppers, 

 the Weevils in the granaries and Wire-worms in the turnip crop, 

 the Letter-writers scoring over the lank and sickly plantation 

 clumj)s, one and all of such ministers of destruction and un- 

 bidden retainers are sufficiently obnoxious to rid a proud lord of 

 the Salique soil of some of his inborn dignity and uniiiquisitive 

 disposition. Yet this science rather should be considered an 

 application of entomology to humanity than the pure intellectual 

 cult itself, as many would have us to believe. 



My occasional summers spent among those dark romantic 

 lochs that indent the deep depressions in the picturesque clay- 

 slate mountains of the Western Highlands of Scotland, first 

 brought me face to face with the great problem of the influence 

 exerted by climate over our fauna, when the gloomy glen and 

 heathery hill disclosed the existence of sj^ecies unknown in the 

 genial South. The dark Scotch Argus Butterfly flattering in 

 the shady bushes, the globular papery nest of the Tree Wasp 

 hung at the rushing burnside — no less than the sooty aspect 

 assumed alike by the Garden Moth and Braeside Butterfly, with 

 their late and uncertain apjDcarance after the June rains — failed 

 not to exert a special charm for a youthful eye nurtured in the 

 soft South. Among the Alpine flowers that nestle in the wild 

 crags of Loch Rannoch and Braemar this peculiar fauna has 

 its centre, probably from the conditions of climate being more 

 congenial. Then while climbing lonely declivities, where the 

 sheep^s bell and heatherbloom assert their silent reign, the 

 undomesticatt'd condition of certain Clothes Moths had a passing- 

 interest ; for these, I questioned not, were a luxurious race, 



* Address of Mr. H. W. Bates, President of the Entomological Soeiety, 1879. 



