ON THE CAPTURE AND PRESERVATION OF COLEOPTERA. 65 



and that certain other species of widely different structure, but 

 superficially imitating the former, were simultaneously created 

 in very small numbers, in order to maintain a precarious 

 existence for ever afterwards ? What is the meaning, on this 

 view, of all the gradations in protective resemblance, the 

 incompleteness or imperfection of some mimicries ? To these 

 and many other questions that readily occur to us, no satisfactory 

 reply can be made, if it be insisted on that species are immutable, 

 and that the organic world is now in all respects exactly the same 

 as when it sprang into being. But these problems become 

 intelligible when viewed as the natural consequences of the 

 innate variability of species, and the preservation and develop- 

 ment by inheritance, through all time and under all changes in 

 surrounding conditions, of every successive variation advantageous 

 to the organism originating it.* 



NOTES ON THE CAPTURE AND PRESERVATION OF 



COLEOPTERA. 



By Lyonell Fanshawe. 

 I.— APPARATUS. COLLECTING IN WINTER. 



In offering the following notes upon the capture and preserva- 

 tion of Coleoptera to the readers of the ' Entomologist,' my 

 object is to encourage recruits to the study of this branch of 

 Entomology so much neglected by British insect collectors. 

 The first difficulty found by many who would like to investigate 

 the mysteries of an unknown group of insects, is usually how to 

 commence. The manner of this has to a large extent been 

 already set forth by writers on the subject of Coleoptera, such as 

 Eye, in * British Beetles,' chapters vi. and vii. ; Newman, in 

 * The Insect Hunter's Companion ' (3rd edition) ; Fowler, in his 

 series of papers in vols. xv. and xvi. of this Magazine ; and 

 other authors elsewhere. Though I may be thought to be 

 treading too closely in the footprints of some of the later writers 

 on this portion of the subject, I venture to think that the 

 following hints on the best ways of finding and i^reserving 



* Part of an Address delivered at the Annual Meeting of the South African 

 Philosophical Society. 



ENTOM. — MARCH, 1885. K 



