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are two very closely allied species which make it desirable to 
re-examine the type. If I am not much mistaken this 
reference to original types will become increasingly necessary. 
It is therefore of the greatest importance that these Standard 
Specimens should be carefully preserved, and that their where- 
abouts should be known. Partly with this view the Trustees 
of the British Museum have recently published the History of 
the Collections in the Natural History Departments. 
This, of course, does not give a list of the types in the 
Museum, which is impossible, but it gives a lst of the 
principal collections of insects which contained types when 
acquired by the Museum. ‘This is not very much, but it is a 
step in the right direction. It is impossible to say how many 
type specimens of insects our National Collection possesses, 
but the number must be very large, and we are continually 
adding to them. Collections are broken up and sold; the 
type specimens pass from one collection to another and are 
lost sight of; fortunately they occasionally find their way 
into the Museum, as did some of Westwood’s (described more 
than fifty years ago) only a short time since. 
Complaints have sometimes been made that type specimens 
are not allowed to go out of our National Museum; the rule 
has been even stigmatized as selfish, Now although I 
sympathize with any entomologist who wishes to borrow a 
type, I think the rule is a sound one, as the Museum is the 
guardian of these types not for any private individual but in 
the interest of science for all time. 
But although the actual types must not leave the Museum, 
there are duplicate specimens of a large number of them, 
identical with the types, and often part of the series received 
with the types. Duplicates are allowed by the Trustees to 
be sent out (under strict regulations) to specialists who are 
naming specimens for the Museum. I should like to go 
further than that. Whenever there are duplicates identical 
with the type, I should like to put a specimen of each species 
aside for the special purpose of being sent out. I should in 
fact like to do more. I should like to see established what, 
for want of a better name, might be called a Circulating 
Collection, somewhat on the lines of a circulating library. 
