didn't answer, and of course the lazy ones would soon find 

 that, and then they would think they need take no further 

 trouble. 



Some who have been purring very complacently over 

 these pages would perhaps wish us to specify more particu- 

 larly what class of our readers we are attacking ; of course 

 they conceive themselves exempted, and have been pleasantly 

 passing on all our castigations to their neighbours. 



Now these remarks are intended especially to apply to all 

 those (a pretty numerous class, too) who think they don't 

 need them ; the true worker is always painfully aware of his 

 short-comings, and is always feeling that he neither works 

 long enough, well enough, nor with sufficient vigour and 

 determination. The lazy, on the contrary, are often half 

 appalled at the amount of work they think they have do?ie, 

 so that of course those who need the castigation most will be 

 the readiest to pass it over to their friends. 



We are perfectly aware that it is far pleasanter to apply a 

 lecture to a neighbour than to ourselves, but then our apply- 

 ing it to our neighbour does him no good, whilst at the same 

 time it fosters our vanity and self-conceit, already inordinate 

 enough, in all conscience ; and the joke of the thing is, that 

 at the very same time our neighbour is applying all the self- 

 same lecture to us. It is astonishing how ready we all are 

 to think other people would be the better for a little good 

 advice ! 



Our complaint is this, that hardly one collector in a hun- 

 dred thinks of studying Entomology, and not one in ten of 

 those who do makes anything out of his studies. Can this 

 be a satisfactory state of things ? 



Of course our views of the existing race of Entomologists 

 are founded very much on our own experience. There may 



