(coat?) 
enabling the possessor Mantly to refer to the capture, &c., of 
every individual example in his collection at any future period, 
notwithstanding the same may have been removed upon re- 
arranging ‘many a time and oft’; and a small book of a few 
leaves will serve for many years. Not so a journal of names; 
such a one I commenced in 1810, and have carried it on to the 
present time, 1847 !—very irregularly in parts, it must be con- 
fessed, owing to the enormous quantity of entries, sometimes 
more than 8000 in a month !—till the number recorded has 
extended to between 30,000 and 40,000; a sad expenditure of 
labour, and from its extent comparatively useless.” 
Here let us pause to moralise: an entomologist in his fifty- 
fifth year admits that for thirty-seven years he has been sailing 
on a wrong tack, and that both time and labour have been 
wasted. 
And yet the time was not wasted, if such a reflection led to 
the dawn of better things ; the writer was here manifestly making 
those ‘‘ footprints on the sands of time ” from which ‘‘ another— 
shall take heart again.”’ 
Mr. Stephens then proceeds to unfold his proposed plan, that 
each insect should bear a number, from which, by reference to a 
journal, its date and locality, with precise habitat, could be at 
any time identified. 
The details sketched out by Mr. Stephens have not recom- 
mended themselves for general adoption, mainly because his 
suggestion was that if twenty different insects were captured at 
the same time and place, under similar circumstances, they 
should all bear the same number; but his recommendation that 
each insect should bear a nwmber has, | am happy to say, been 
very largely followed. 
Prior to the appearance of Mr. Stephens’ note I had followed 
the plan previously adopted by that entomologist. I had kept a 
‘journal of names ”’; this began in 1838, and from my defective 
knowledge at one time, this journal would only mislead any one 
into whose hands it might fall, as the names therein entered 
were very often not at all those of the captures I had actually 
made. 
With the Ist January, 1848, I turned over a new leaf, and 
from that date all my captures have borne a number, and can be 
referred to instanter. Those for 1848 simply bear the numbers 
