THE NEW ENTOMOLOGY. 85 



purpose of upsetting old, or establishing new arrangements — ail 

 genuine and indispensable work, the fruits of whicii we to-day 

 enjoy, for we have to a greater exteat than we can always appre- 

 ciate entered into possession of their labours. They were, I say, 

 so intent on this purely departmental work, so to speak, as to 

 miss the consideration of the wider issues involved in that new 

 aspect of Nature as a whole which was then beginning to surprise 

 and captivate scientihc Europe. Thus it seems that cj[uite a long 

 interval elapsed from the general provisional acceptance of the 

 theory of Evolution by Biologists, before Entomologists as such 

 (with indeed some notable exceptions, as Wallace and Bates) turned 

 their attention anxiously to the subject, and began to see how 

 Entomology under that induence miglit rise from a study to a 

 science, how on the entomological arena some of the toughest biolo- 

 gical battles might be fought, and how, by entomological methods, 

 some of her profoundest secrets might be wrested from Nature. 



This new departure, then, seems to be both so recent and so 

 distinct as to justify me when I refer to it as the New Entomology. 

 Its key-note is Synthesis, while that of the old school was 

 Analysis. The disciples of the latter supposed that when every 

 insect form in the world had been described and catalogued, and 

 the whole of the order finally and unanimously arranged in 

 methodical series of divisions, then their warfare would be 

 accomplished and their occupation gone. We, on the contrary, 

 know that even with such work perfected our real labours would 

 be but begun. 



The generation of students who were content when they had 

 arranged in their cabinets irreproachable specimens of, say, all 

 the known species of Vanessidse, carefully neglecting all varieties 

 or aberrations as blind and inexplicable errors on the part of 

 Nature, have almost ceased to be. We not only require all known 

 species of any group we may be studying, l3ut we must have 

 illustrated as well the whole gam.ut of variation ; nay, more, we 

 must submit larvae and pupse to strange conditions, freeze them 

 and force them with a Merrifield and a Weisman, and induce 

 variation unknown before, — our aim the discovery of some 

 aboriginal form, some proto-Vanessid, an abstraction our fathers 

 never so much as dreamt of ; and to trace the broken lines of 

 convergence, and elucidate the fragmentary records of descent, 

 we study not only the morphology but the embryology of a group, 

 not only normal but more especially varietal forms. So each 

 spot and each line has its meaning and its derivation, and points 

 backwards to some common origin, some type in which the 

 present differentiation might have been originally merged. The 

 runes of the mackerel's back were said of old to convey to him 

 who could read them the darkest secrets of fate ; more suggestive 

 to the modern entomologist and more legible are the primaeval 

 hieroglyphics of the butterlly's wing. Consider, again, colour 



