THE STUDY OF LIFE-HISTORY. 93 



under stones. This is apparently taken from Modeer, whose 

 insect has hitherto been referred with doubt to Orthezia nrticcB. 



Coccus TUBERCULATUS, Bouche, Nat. der Insekten, 1834, p. 18, 

 pi. 1. — Found on Malvaceae, and probably from South America. 

 It is certainly a Lecaniine, and probably a Pidrinaria ; but I 

 have never seen anj^thing exactly as described and figured. The 

 antennae are figured as 10-jointed, and there is a row of small 

 tooth-like objects down the back. 



AspiDioTus MYRTHi, Bouche, S.E.Z. 1851, p. 112, has been 

 erroneously catalogued as a Chionaspis ; it appears to be a Myti- 

 laspis. 



East Las Vegas, New Mexico, U.S.A. : Jan. 2iid, 1901. 



THE STUDY OF LIFE HISTORY.- 



" I have gathered a posic of other men's flowers, and nothing but 

 the thread that binds them is mine own." — Montaigne. 



" The life of individual man is of a mixed nature. In part 

 he submits to the free-will impulses of himself and others, in 

 part he is under the inexorable dominion of law. He insensibly 

 changes his estimate of the relative power of each of these 

 influences as he passes through successive stages. In the con- 

 fidence of youth he imagines that very much is under his own 

 control ; in the disappointment of old age, veiy little. As time 

 passes on and the delusions of early imaginations vanish, he 

 learns to correct his more sanguine views, and prescribes a 

 narrower boundary for the things he expects to obtain. The 

 realities of life undeceive him at last, and there steals over him 

 at times the knowledge that the things he has secured are not 

 always the things he 5xpected." t 



Nevertheless, philosophically considered, the general trend of 

 that life may be summed up in the one word "progression." 

 And, as with individual man, so it is with groups of men, for 

 communities are influenced by the same disasters, or complete 

 the same cycle as the individual. Many never pass beyond 

 infancy, some reach the vigour of manhood, whilst others perish 

 suddenly or die of sheer old age. But though during existence 

 they may not infrequently encounter ill-fortune, or what is 

 popularly designated " bad luck," their absolute course can never 

 be retrograde; in infancy, childhood, manhood, old age, it is 

 ever onward. And as with communities in general, so it is with 



-•= Address to the Lancashire and Cheshire Entomological Society de- 

 livered at the Koyal Institution, Liverpool, on January 14th, 1901, by Vice- 

 President E. J. Burgess Sopp, M.E.Met.Soc, F.E.S. 



I J. W. Draper. 



