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THE NEW ENTOMOLOGY. 

 By W. F. de Visjies Kane, M.A., M.R.I.A., F.E.S. 



Mr. Sharp's address on this subject, which has fortunately 

 been given a wider pubhcity in these pages than the Proceedings 

 of the Society to which it was deUvered would have secured, 

 needs no such apology as that with which it concludes. A pur- 

 view of recent additions to our lists of species has doubtless 

 much interest, but Mr. Sharp's concise review of the field for 

 scientific speculation ofi'ered by Entomology is of much weightier 

 import, and as such will be welcomed. The complex nature of 

 zoological enquiries inevitably gives rise to diversified specu- 

 lations, many of which may fade in the light of further accumu- 

 lations of evidence ; but the converging rays contributed by 

 researches into biological phenomena in various departments of 

 the science must eventually lead to important results. Investi- 

 gations into the morphology of insects oS'er, as the writer 

 points out, peculiar opportunities for experimental research ; and 

 although Paleontology has of course preserved more scanty and 

 fragmentary testimony with regard to the evolution and ontogeny 

 of insects than of most other classes, yet the modern phenomena 

 of variation which they display so widely are so capable of 

 examination that ere long we may hope this favourite study 

 will furnish valuable clues to some secrets of Nature. The 

 thickness and wide areas of extension of geological formations 

 witness to enormous epochs, not more trenchantly than the 

 persistence, even to the present date, of characters presumably 

 impressed on certain races of plants and insects during the lapse 

 of the glacial ages ; though surviving in latitudes and situations 

 wholly differing for thousands of years past in climatal and 

 other environment. But, on the other hand, there are species of 

 Lepidoptera which appear to be in a most unstable condition ; 

 and some are apparently rapidly conforming under our eyes to 

 changed conditions of environment under stress of natural selec- 

 tion and heredity. 



These two classes of phenomena seem to challenge solution 

 by the followers of the two schools of philosophical speculation 

 represented by Mr. Herbert Spencer and Professor Weismann 

 respectively. An instance of the persistence of acquired characters 

 under change of environment is afforded by the occurrence in 

 Scotland and Ireland of the alpine variety montivaga oi A crony eta 

 euphorhice. It is generally believed to have acquired its varietal 

 traits during the glacial epochs, and transmitted them through 

 its descendants who settled in these islands before they were 

 insulated from the European mainland. But while it is explicable 

 enough that the variety still persists on the Alps under approxi- 

 mate subarctic conditions, while the type prevails in the lowlands, 



