NOTES BY THE WAY. 



65 



This species is smaller than P. nifira, Cam., the type of the 

 genus ; the two species may be separated thus : — 

 A square white mark on centre of face above, the front 

 with a distinct longitudinal keel, the basal seg- 

 ment of abdomen distinctly punctured. No plate 

 between the antennte. Length, 8-9 mm. . . nigra. 

 Face immaculate, the front without a distinct keel, the 

 basal segment of abdomen smooth. A smooth, 

 angled plate between the antennae . . . loncjispina. 



NOTES BY THE WAY. 



Excepting a few small groups of insects, no museum, public 

 or private, in this country can compete in the extent of its 

 collections with that at Cromwell Road, which has recently made 

 such strenuous and entirely effectual efforts under the jurisdiction 

 of Mr. C. 0. Waterbouse, I.S.O., to bring the valuable material 

 possessed by it up to date. We are delighted to find that, at 

 the expiration of his term of office, Mr. Waterbouse is volun- 

 tarily continuing his good work in the Public Insect Gallery. 

 Another vacancy has been caused by the deplorable nervous 

 breakdown of Mr. Heron ; but both posts are already filled — by 

 Mr. Edwards, who is taking charge of the British Diptera, and 

 Mr. Blair, to whom Mr. Gahan has been obliged, by the press of 

 bis official business as Assistant-in-Charge of the Insect Depart- 

 ment, to very largely resign his work on the Coleoptera. The 

 new admiuistrational note is, however, struck by the acquisi- 

 tion of three Permanent Assistants ; and our honoured Editor 

 has also consented to join the good work as a Special in his 

 particular branch. 



No man has time, and few have the inclination, to work the 

 whole of Entomology. Literature is so vast nowadays that there 

 will never be another Westwood. Indeed, it is quite as much as 

 the average stay-at-home man, working his own branch, can do 

 to follow the researches of various scientific missions sent out by 

 those in authority (that is to say, with spare cash) to more or 

 less remote and entomologically unexplored districts. The 

 nearest one now in progress is to be completed during the coming 

 summer, and the results will shortly appear in the ' Transactions 

 of the Royal Irish Academy.' This is a general survey of tiny 

 Clare Island, off the west coast of Mayo, battered by every 

 storm thundering three thousand miles across from New York, 

 till it has become so erosed as to be perpendicular for two 

 thousand feet or so on its north-west front, and thence falling 

 away to sea-level on the south-east, where is the only scrap of 



ENTOM. — FEBRUARY, 1911. F 



