@ evi) 
In what I have been saying I have had the public museums 
chiefly in my mind. I feel, however, that arrangements could 
be made to assist our country museums and local Natural 
History societies, and with regard to British insects I think 
it would be useful to have a single specimen of each species, 
arranged in families, so that they could be borrowed by country 
entomologists, who find it so difficult to name their specimens 
from books, and who have few opportunities of coming to 
London to consult our collections. 
I have taken this opportunity of suggesting my scheme. I 
may not have hit upon the best plan; but I feel sure of this, 
that in the future we shall have recourse to some other means 
of determining our insects besides descriptions. A good figure 
backed up by a good description will as a rule enable you to 
determine a species with a fair degree of certainty, especially 
if it is a Lepidopterous insect. But the number of species 
figured bears a small proportion to the number described, and 
good figures of insects other than Lepidoptera are very scarce 
indeed. 
When you consider the time spent in searching the ever- 
increasing literature, the weariness of reading long descriptions, 
the disappointment (to say the least of it) resulting from short 
ones, and the uncertainty attending the whole process, any 
plan that may help us to obtain a more rapid and more certain 
determination of our species is worth considering, and if what 
I have suggested would at the same time (as I believe it 
might) give us greater fixity in our nomenclature, the sooner 
such a collection is begun the better, 
