THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



No. 3.] JULY, MDCCCLXIV. [Price 6d. 



Aruih/lical Notice of the ' Tranmctions of the Entomolo- 

 ffical Society of London.'' Third Series. Vol. i. Part 

 IX. With 58 pp. letter-press, besides General Index, 

 &c. ; and two Plates, one of them coloured. Price 

 Six Shillings. April, 1864. 



I AM sure that no member of the Entomological Society 

 will be disposed to quarrel with me when I say that, how- 

 ever assiduous and however skilful may have been our pre- 

 vious Secretaries, and no one is more willing than I to yield, 

 to each the credit justly due, the suum cuique^ still our pre- 

 sent Secretary, Mr. Dunning, stands out in bold relief, when 

 compared with his predecessors, as the Secretary par excel- 

 lence, as the man who has been the first to raise our records 

 to the dignity of Reports : this is no light or ill-considered 

 praise : the value of a Report depends not exclusively on its 

 accuracy, but equally on its intelligibility, — on the pruning 

 out of all that is worthless in our circumlocutory discussions, 

 and arranging and compressing the remainder into readable 

 compass, without subtracting a tittle from their value. And 

 this Mr. Dunning has accomplished ; and now, for the first 

 time since our existence as a Society, have our Proceedings 

 assumed a form which really entitles them to the respect of 

 the scientKic world. I am the more anxious to record my 

 opinion of Mr. Dunning's great services, on the very threshold 

 of Notices which I trust may be continued through the brief 

 remainder of my life, now unmistakeably falling into the " sere 

 and yellow ;" because, knowing, as 1 do know, that repeated 

 asseveration confers no additional weight on statements of 

 any kind, it is scarcely probable that I shall revert to this 

 subject, however tempting. 



The present Part of the ' Transactions ' contains two sub- 

 stantive papers, thus intituled : — 



VOL. II. C 



