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Mr. Distant seems to greatly resent every criticism of his 

 Works, forgetting that science can make no progress without criti- 

 cism, and he apparently wants to be undisturbed in filling the 

 liemipterological literature with systematic enigmas. In one of 

 Mr. Distant's latest papers there is a passage too characteristic of 

 his attitude towards criticism to be left unmentioned. Many years 

 ago G. Fallou described as new, without consulting the Uterature, 

 ail such Hemiptera in his collection that he did not fmd named in 

 Signoret's collection. His descriptions are very short and quite 

 inadéquate, but he sent me his types and I published the syno- 

 nyniy of his species. J did so without further comment, for Fallou 

 did not prétend to be a specialist and he did not try to gloss over 

 his dilettantism with a veneer of érudition. Yet this short synony- 

 mie notice of mine is sufficient reason for Mr. Distant to depict 

 Fallou as my « critical target » ! It is true that Distant's works 

 hâve been severely censurei by his colleagues in Hemipterology, 

 but there bas been too sufficient reason for this criticism and I 

 cannot but agrée with the late Rreddin when he spoke of Dis- 

 tant's c( disastrous activity ». Mr. Distant speaks of my « constant 

 animadversions ». Errare Immanum est and anybody can make 

 occasional mistakes, but when Distant describes Myodochidse as 

 Coreidœ, Coreidre as Myodochida?, Pyrrhocoridœ as Pentatomidse, 

 Acanthiadae as Reduviidœ and Reduviidœ as Nabidœ, when he 

 describes parts of the abdomen as belonging to the sternum, larvae 

 as imagines and imagines as larvée, when his descriptions are not 

 only insufficient but often positively wrong, when he in his papers 

 shows a constant incapacity to grasp what characters should be 

 used in separating gênera and species in the group he happens to 

 be dealing with, and w^hen he constantly tries to défend or deny 

 unquestionable errors, — then I fail to see why ail this should be 

 passed by in silence. Stâl (Ôfv. Vet. Ak. Fôrh. 1870, p. 007) said 

 of F. Walkkr : « this author's notions of systematic characters are 

 so hazy that one does not venture to assume that he bas correctly 

 understood even the most distinct forms ». Thèse very words are 

 applicable also to Mr. Distant. It is indeed a pity that so great a 

 part of ail known Flemiptera bas passed through the hands of 

 Walker and Distant, and it is at least fortunate that a good deal 

 of the Central- American Heteroptera was worked out by the 

 coleopterist Mr. Champion whose masterly treatise on the families 

 belonging to lus part of the Rhynchotal division of the « Biologia » 

 is an adornment of the hemipterological literature. 



