1818 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 69 



All enthusiasts are apt to be uncritical, and collectors for a variety of reasons 

 are probably more prone to error than most people. Our zeal outruns discretion; 

 in the flush of a fresh capture we are at the mercy of two opposite impulses; we 

 would dearly love our prize to prove something quite new, and we fairly ache to 

 get it placed just where it belongs, with its next-of-kin in our cabinet. Now, an 

 insect being a most intricate complex of diverse features, we are very apt — the wish 

 being father to the thought — to seize on something superficial and strain a point 

 of identity or of difference. How often in this way have two individual insects, 

 created male and female of one species after their kind, been divorced to opposite 

 ends of the collecting case from some purely sexual or even accidental distinction 

 of size, marking, or structure? And the contrary -error of confusing types essen- 

 tially different, augmented even, on occasion, by the distracting presence of mimetic 

 forms, beguiles the unwary just as often; and here it is that the two Dromios get 

 their cue to come in and play the cat and banjo with our cabinet. I remember as 

 a small boy arranging my collection of birds' eggs by similarity of colour-pattern, 

 and under the impression that they were just undersized eggs of the common 

 chaffinch, innocently disposing of some very rare red-poll's eggs to a more mature 

 oologist( an Aberdonian and already one of the shrewdest of Scotchmen). 



Henshaw's check-list of North American Coleoptera no doubt teems with 

 synonyms ; but on the other hand, if you trace back the history of a standard check- 

 list, from its latest edition to its earliest, you will meet almost as many instances 

 of genuine species that have blushed unseen for generations under a pseudonym; 

 and though some authorities are undoubtedly overfond of multiplying species, 

 there can be little question that the most carefully prepared and up-to-date check- 

 list still contains a few rightful heirs, waiting to come into their own, hidden under 

 the bushel of a synonym. It is the story of one of these neglected claimants that 

 I shall try to tell you here. 



When I entered the field of entomology more than twelve years ago, it was by 

 way of a. bridle-path from the neighbouring realm of botany. And the natural in- 

 clination to make my hobby of wild flowers run in double harness with that of 

 beetles, was given a final set in the very first season of 1905 ; I went over to Great 

 Britain on a botany trip at the end of June, and formed there the habit of carrying 

 a cyanide bottle out with me on all occasions; whatever I saw in the shape of a 

 beetle on stem, leaf or blossom, I captured, noting its season and habit. It was 

 this somewhat peculiar and restricted form of collecting that soon led me to a 

 number of unusual finds and at last landed me, as a sort of monomaniac, among 

 the Longicorns. Moreover, my running mate in Port Hope, the man whose hobby 

 trotted to the same tune as mine, had several years the start of me in entomology, 

 and it was only by drawing on my capital of plant-lore that I could hope to turn the 

 liandicap into a neck-and-neck race. 



I well remember how closely I watched in 1906 for every new flower to unfold 

 from early April on through the weeks to August and September. And before 

 May was over I had already made some flnds quite new to my companion, whose 

 cabinet specimens had hitherto enabled me to determine nearly all the contents of 

 my cyanide bottle. I can still plainly see in memory the hawthorn on the edge 

 of a certain wood where some of my first surprises occurred. And foremost among 

 these was a dusky grey and black insect so like one of the common large black 

 ants, that it was only after passing it over several times that I noticed the long 

 gracefully-curving antennae, and hastened to bottle my find. As soon as I got 

 home I communicated this new discovery to my fellow-collector, and he included 

 some specimens in a box of material he was on the point of sending away for 

 identification. 



