TBE ENTOMOLOGIST, 



No. 04.] APRIL, M.DCCC.LXIX. [Price 6d. 



Critical Notes on Entomological Authors. 

 By A. B. Farn, Esq. 



Now that entomologists are becoming more numerous in 

 England each year, and consequently the literature having 

 the study of insects for its object is in proportionale de- 

 mand, it is, I thinli, a matter to be deplored that books 

 intended for the instruction in, and introduction to, the study 

 of Entomology should be most conspicuously open to the 

 charge of carelessness, either in the writing or revision ; or, 

 where this fault cannot fairly be charged, a worse may be 

 urged, namely, that the descriptions of the larvae — I am 

 speaking now more particularly of the Lepidoptera — should 

 not be original, but borrowed from foreign writers, many of 

 whom (if the larvae they describe are identical with those for 

 which the several descriptions are used by the English 

 writers), I am afraid, allowed their vivid imaginations to 

 supply the place of sober fact. 



In such books as Professor Westwood's ' Butterflies of 

 Great Britain ' and Mr. Stainton's ' Manual of British Butter- 

 flies and Moths,' the authors of which are generally con- 

 considered men in the first rank of entomologists, it would 

 only be natural to expect to find reliable information. 



To take the first-named work, what can point out more 

 strikingly the carelessness with which the book was edited 

 than the fact that, as a locality for M. Artemis, Monks Wood, 

 Hunts, is given ; fur A. Iris, Monks Wood, Cambridgeshire ; 

 for T. Belulae, Monks VVood, Cambridgeshire ; for T. Priini, 

 Monks Wood, Herts; for T. W-Album, Monks Wood, Cam- 

 bridgeshire '^ There is one Monks Wood notorious to ento- 

 mologists, and the especial locality for T. Pruni : this is in 

 Hunts, not Herts, and I consequently suppose that, after all, 

 only one Monks Wood is intended, and that the counties of 

 Cambridgeshire and Herts are palpable mistakes, which the 



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