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of the remarkable insect before us,—that entomology is nothing 
more than collecting butterflies and beetles. This is but getting 
together the materials for study. We want to know all about 
these butterflies and beetles. Naturalists in these days must go 
ahead of the mere collectors of old, if they think to do anything 
for the advancement of real science. 
Lord Selborne, in a recent speech at a public meeting,* remarked 
that “the constitution of England was the product of cireum- 
stances, changing from age to age as they changed ;” and the same 
remark might be made respecting the constitution of the animal 
world. Here, too, there has been a continued succession of 
changes from the time of the first appearance of life on this earth 
to the present day—change of form, change of structure, change 
of habits and instincts, under the constraining influences of the 
earth’s own changes. Nature has never stood still, and never 
will stand still; however imperceptible may be its changes to 
the men of a single generation. And it is the business of the 
naturalist to inquire into these changes; to work out the full 
history (so far as we can get it) of every living creature, and not 
simply its own history, but that of its progenitors as well ;—to 
tell of the silent advance, step by step, from simple to more 
complicated forms; carrying back his investigations from a 
kainozoic fauna to a palewozoic fauna, and stopping only at the 
azoic rocks, where the geologist—had there been one in those 
days—might have found work in noting the gradual evolution of 
this earth from its first beginnings, but where the biologist—ere 
life had yet started into being, even in its lowest forms—would 
have had nothing to do. 
* As reported I think in The Zimes. 
