• Ixii 



relate more especially to the systematic department of our Science, 

 and afterwards notice one or two treatises which bear upon a subject 

 interesting not only to all naturalists but to all thinking men, namely, 

 the evidence afforded by Entomology on the question of the origin of 

 species : this will lead me to offer a few remarks on the study of the 

 geographical distribution of insects, with which, with your per- 

 mission, I will conclude. 



The work of a special nature which will have interested probably 

 the largestnumber of Entomologists is the ' Catalogus Coleopterorum,' 

 by Dr. Gemminger and the Baron Edgar von Harold. Of this 

 colossal undertaking two Parts have appeared during the year, con- 

 taining together 752 pages, exclusive of Index : at this rate it will 

 take ten or twelve goodly-sized volumes to complete what is simply 

 a catalogue of all described beetles, with their synonymy and locali- 

 ties, and references to descriptions. None but those who have 

 attempted to compile a catalogue of a group of Coleoptera for their 

 own use — and such a catalogue is an indispensable preliminary to 

 studying the group and publishing new species — can conceive the 

 difficulties which the authors of this w'ork must have had to con- 

 tend with in compiling a Catalogue of the Order for the whole 

 world. Accuracy of synonymy throughout, and completeness of clas- 

 sification, whether of genera or of species, were out of the question. 

 The difficulty with regard to classifying the species of a genus in 

 their natural order — a difficulty which arises from each of perhaps a 

 dozen authors registering his species according to a different arrange- 

 ment, or no arrangement at all — has been got over by the authors by 

 entering the species alphabetically. With regard to vSynonymy, the 

 general rule adopted by them appears to be that of registering every 

 genus and species, on the authority of its describer, excepting in 

 cases where any have been proved, by recent writers, to hav been 

 previously described ; and so well has the recent literature been 

 worked up and the authors' judgment exercised, that the number of 

 these duplicate entries of genera and species appears to be very 

 limited. Few experienced Entomologists believed in the possibility 

 of such a Catalogue as the present being successfully carried out, and 

 the quick succession of the volumes (the third I am told is now 

 passing through the press) is an agreeable surprise to them. The 

 value of such a compilation resides not only in its facilitating the 

 naming of collections, but in its furnishing the means of working out 

 the statistics of that vast host of organic beings which we term 



