46 Prof. E. B. Poulton— The Collections 



to be trusted, and the immense numbers of his unpublished 

 observations on natural history at once acquire the value of 

 records by a trained naturalist with a fanatical love of truth 

 for its own sake. Here, then, was the means of carrying 

 back the detailed record of the occurrence of many thousands 

 of species in two most interesting parts of the world, and to 

 construct a trustworthy standard by which to measure the 

 rate of future change; for one great justification of the 

 immense funds which are expended on museums is that they 

 will serve this very purpose for generations yet to come. 

 The critical examination of the Burchell specimens proves 

 that with ordinary care and the exclusion of light insects' 

 pigments will endure for probably an indefinite period. 

 Many of these specimens have not had ordinary care during 

 a part of their history, the African collection being especially 

 attacked by Anthreni, probably between 1825 and 1830, when 

 Burchell was travelling in Brazil. But even upon the most 

 fragmentary of these the patterns are still quite distinct and 

 have undergone hardly any change. 



The collection, combined with the manuscript notes on 

 labels and in the note-books, furthermore supplies a great body 

 of observations on habits, instincts, &c. which are still im- 

 perfectly known, and often altogether unknown. In many 

 cases 1 find the records of interesting observations since made 

 and published by others, such as the sound produced by the 

 South- American butterfly, Ageronia feronia, described by 

 Darwin in the " Voyage of the 'Beagle'' (London, 1876, 

 pp. 33,34), or the habits of the driver-ant (Eeiton) and leaf- 

 cutting ant {CEcodoma), described by Darwin, Belt, Bates, &c. 



"When 1 first began to arrange for the publication of an 

 account of the Burchell Collections at Oxford it was intended 

 to prepare an introductory memoir upon the life of the great 

 naturalist himself; but this proved to be too extensive an 

 undertaking for these pages, and it is hoped that the u Life " 

 will appear as a separate work at no distant date. In the 

 meantime a brief abstract of the chief facts which I have been 

 able to bring together is set forth below as an introduction to 

 the papers which will follow. 



William John Burchell, the eldest son of a nurseryman at 

 Fulham, was born about the year 1782. He received an 

 excellent education, as is proved by the admirable style of 

 his published works, the facility with which he wrote Latin, 

 and the number of sciences with which he was intimately 

 acquainted. His manuscript notes on South-African insects 

 in the Hope Department are written on the blank sides of 

 the pages of his French exercise-book — a history of Greece 



