VI PREFACE. 



I may, perhaps, be allowed to take this opportunity of entering a strong 

 protest against the barbarous modern Continental practice of applying an 

 entirely new name to a well-known species when it is discovered that the 

 original author had before him at the time of drawing up his description 

 several individuals of what are now considered, or known, to be distinct 

 species. There is, doubtless, something to be said in favour of the prac- 

 tice : if types are inaccessible, it may be impossible to decide from the 

 description alone to which of your species to apply the name : a part may 

 apply only to one, other parts only to another of your distinct insects. 

 Such is, of course, extremely confusing, and the simplest expedient is un- 

 doubtedly to redescribe the whole. But Science is not founded on 

 simplest methods to oneself, which are more than likely to lead to in- 

 creased bewilderment to others, and throw our predecessors into oblivion. 

 The law of Priority decrees that the first name to which a recognisable 

 description is attached shall stand, and more especially so if the type 

 specimen be extant for examination. If the description apply impartially 

 to several latter-day species, the first specimen in the author's series must 

 be regarded as the type, unless such should be especially indicated (as in 

 Desvignes' collection), which is rarely the case in the cabinets of the 

 older authors. The fact that you are personally unable to examine the 

 type is no valid excuse for disregarding it ; and, in Britain, we shall have 

 yet less excuse if Mr. Waterhouse's scheme for a subtype collection be 

 carried out*. If the description be avowedly drawn from a number of 

 specimens, which differ inter se to some extent, but not, in the opinion of 

 the original author, sufficiently to entitle them to specific rank, the first of 

 these must be regarded as the type, and those parts of the description 

 referring to it retained as typical. Thomson is, perhaps, the worst ex- 

 ponent of this new-old species system, and is followed by Kriechbaumer ; 

 even Schmiedeknecht errs in the same direction. Thomson's 

 Odontomerus and Kriechbaumer's bifurcate Ischnoceros are cases in point ; 

 the former doubtless needs dividing into several species, but these I will 

 not accept till we know the original. If we agree to reinstate Scopoli's 

 Pimpla inqidsUor in place of P. siercorator, on the sole strength of speci- 

 mens in his collection — the description being obviously inadequate — 

 surely it is invidious to erect new names for insects, the old ones of which 

 can as easily be confirmed. It is not necessary to point out to what a 



* C/. Presidential Address read before tlie Entomological Society of London, igob. 



