1896. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 347 



will." He wishes to find out what occurs in a state of nature, and 

 especially what does not occur, and his object in having the list 

 printed was that he might send it round, for their local census, to the 

 very few people in this country and on the Continent who collect 

 these band forms. Mr. Carrington also points out that the study of 

 variations has proved of great importance in the hands of Darwin 

 and Bateson. This is admirable. This is precisely what we hinted 

 was necessary. But of all this there was no suggestion in the 

 preface that was attached to the " Label List." What we objected 

 to was not the scientific study of variations, but their meaningless 

 collection and record, and, above all, the misleading habit of attaching 

 varietal names to variations which may, it is true, be constantly 

 repeated, but which have not been proved to exist as separate and 

 continuous races. On this question Mr. Carrington has a paragraph 

 which is unintelligible to us ; we regret our obtuseness the more 

 since the paragraph appears to be of a sarcastic nature. We can 

 only gather from it that the Editors of Natural Science and of 

 Science Gossip use the word " variety " in different senses ; which of 

 them is right it would ill become us to decide. 



The Use and Abuse of Collecting. 



Still addressing us as the " Superior Scientist," Mr. Carrington 

 hints that we are casting wet blankets on young naturalists, deterring 

 them " from pursuing lines of thought and investigation which are 

 really unworked"; that, in short, we desire the extinction of the field- 

 naturalist. Our regular readers, of whom Mr. Carrington is obviously 

 not one, will recognise the absurd injustice of these aspersions. 

 From the leading article on "Private Collections," on p. 161 of our 

 first volume, down to the note headed " Natural History versus 

 Systematic Work," on p. 4 of this volume, we have been perfectly 

 consistent in urging the importance of observations in the field and 

 the value of the collecting spirit when directed along proper channels; 

 we have even, strange though it may seem to Mr. Carrington, 

 insisted more than once on the necessity for the detailed and 

 systematic collection of those minute variations which Science Gossip 

 loves to call varieties. What we have protested against has been the 

 restriction of a man's energies to mere collecting, often indiscriminate 

 and harmful in its effects on the flora and fauna, covetous of rarities 

 and show-specimens, and rarely paying attention to larval forms, food, 

 or bionomic considerations. Why was it for thirty years " the 

 custom of the 'superior entomologist' to sneer at British butterflies 

 and their collection " ? Simply because the ordinary " bug-hunter " 

 did not, and did not even wish to, pay attention to their life-histories, 

 to their comparative structure, or to the various points that made 

 Mr. Scudder's work what Mr. Carrington calls it — "really scientific." 

 Even now there are entomologists — we do not know whether they 



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