58 



to augment tlie respect of our Continental bretliren, or to raise Entomology from the 

 low level in llie scale of the Sciences wliicli she is doubtless doomed to occupy until 

 her votaries consent to devote some share of that shrewdness and zeal which they so 

 conspicuously manifest in the acquisition of specimens to the arrival at and adoption 

 of a correct and legitimate nomenclature, and the higher objects to which collections 

 should be subservient, and to which this is assuredly the true prelude. In conclusion, 

 I will observe that Bledius unicornis was captured by Mr. Wollaston al the Chesil 

 Bank and Exmouth Warrens several years back, and that I long since thus designated 

 the specimens in that gentleman's collection." 



Read the following, by Mr. Newman : — 



A'o<e on Pairs of Species of British Lepidoptera which are Heterocampous and Isomyious. 



" I have endeavoured to prove that Nature has a tendency to assimilate, in the 

 external characters of the adult, certain beings, which, in the earlier, or, as we may 

 express it, preparatory stages of their existence, have little or no apparent similarity to 

 each other. Such assimilations, when they do occur, are always in pairs, and familiar 

 examples will occur to every one in the placental and marsupial sucklers, the hesthoge- 

 nous and gymnogcnous birds, the metamorphotic and immutable reptiles, the vivipa- 

 rous and si)awning fishes. Descending from larger to smaller groups, we find 

 such pairs becoming still more pronounced, and the supposed law or principle still 

 more strikingly exhibited. It has occurred to me that such a law or principle cannot 

 he partial: if it exist in Nature it must be general, and must descend even to species. 

 After a moment's reflection it struck me, further, that the European, and perhaps 

 even the British, Lepidoptera might afford a ready means of testing the value of my 

 theory. I argued to myself that if such pairs existed in Europe they must be known 

 to a Guenee ; if in Britain they must be familiar to a Doubleday, a Shepherd or a 

 Douglas. Both on the Continent and in Britain, Lepidoptera have been studied with 

 a perseverance and a success that has far outstripped the results arising from atten- 

 tion to any other insects; bees, ichneumons, Brachelytra,Khynchophora, although the 

 objects of especial research, are literally unknown in comparison with our indigenous 

 Lepidoptera, and this principally because Lepidoptera are studied in all their stages, 

 the others only in one: the study of Macro-Lepidoptera has become deeply philoso- 

 phical ; that of other insects at present remains comparatively superficial. Hence I 

 can only appeal to the lepidopterist : the general (another term for the superficial) 

 entomologist cannot comprehend my drift. Let a lepidopterist open his breeding- 

 cages, and exhibit to a general entomologist the larvte of Acronycta Psi and A.tridens 

 (to him ' familiar as household words'), of Calocampa vetusta and C. exoleta ; and 

 let the lepidopterist tell the entomologist that these four larvae produce two pairs of 

 moths, of which the individuals composing each pair are so similar that he (the ento- 

 mologist), with all his knowledge, with all his book-learning, could not distinguish 

 between them ; that it required the utmost subtlety in the eye of the lepidopterist 

 himself to distinguish them, and defied the powers of his pen to differentiate them : 

 the entouKilogist would simply exhort the lepidopterist to greater care in his observa- 

 tions, and caution him against adopting iheoiies which could not be supjiorted by an 

 appeal to Nature; the entomologist, in the most friendly spirit, would point out the 

 differences of form and structure in the larvae; would probably select Psi and trideus; 

 would call the lepidopterisl's particular attention to the dorsal column on the larva of 



