THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 129 
Meliloti, I could well understand my being supposed to catch 
burnets for my living. But I see no harm in that. If a 
collector takes insects by the hundred of a kind, there is 
little blame to the unsophisticated in supposing that he does 
it because he is paid. Dealers pure and simple I have 
nothing to say about. By their trade*they are bound to 
find, catch, and carry away every insect with the most trifling 
value. They work for money, not for love; and they are 
outside the discussion altogether. For the rest, those who 
treat others well are well treated in return. As I neither cut 
down people’s trees, nor flog them till I leave beneath each 
one a heap of leaves and broken branches, and as, speaking 
generally, I do not commit barbarisms when entomologizing, 
which I should shun at other times, I never find myself 
unwelcome, though everyone may know well enough that I 
go out catching moths and butterflies. I do not understand 
why others should have different experience. 
As to collectors’ demeanour towards each other, that is a 
subject which has caused me reflections times and oft. The 
mysteries made about a locality; petty dissimulations about 
time of appearance (to throw another off the scent) ; conceal- 
ments of the facts of captures being made ;—these and other 
paltry and more detestable things are, I fear, common. It 
must be really shocking to encounter a collector with a stock- 
in-trade of all these arts. Mr. Walton, so long ago as 1835, 
wrote on this very subject in the ‘ Entomological Magazine’ 
(vol. ii. p. 279) in very feeling and earnest lai. guage, which all 
who have the opportunity should peruse. Mr. Shield (‘ Prac- 
tical Hints,’ pp. 19, 44, 191) and others have, from time to 
time, done what they could to bring about a better state of 
things. But remonstrances, notwithstanding, the complaint 
is, I believe, too well founded; and I regret very much to 
avow my own conviction that there is only one complete and 
certain cure for it. The evil has grown entirely out of the 
fictitious value ascribed to native specimens, and must vanish, 
like a breath, directly foreign specimens are admitted to have 
an equal worth. Ihave all the prejudices of one who for 
sixteen years has collected none but British Lepidoptera; 
and the intention which I have at length definitely formed of 
opening my collection to foreign specimens (or rather taking 
up the European fauna) first had its rise in the condition of 
Ss 
