ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 



Philadelphia, Pa., June, 191 5. 



Incomplete Titles. 



A graduate student in zoology in one of the Universities 

 of the eastern States was once heard to say that her professor 

 had told her that a candidate for the doctor's degree ought to 

 know the names of all the principal genera of the animal king- 

 dom. The reader of these lines is receiving this remark at 

 third hand, so that he is entitled to doubt either the accuracy 

 of the reporters or the justness of the original. There are, 

 however, even in the year 19 15, authors of entomological 

 papers who tacitly assume that editors and readers of journals 

 to which they send their contributions really do possess the 

 astounding lexicographical requirement which terrified the 

 fair graduate. The entomological author of The Butterfly 

 Hunters in the Caribees estimated that Dr. Joseph Ixidy (with 

 whom he conversed on the subject), knew "3000 geological and 

 zoological names," and tells us, without giving his authority, 

 that Cuvier and Louis Agassiz could promptly give the names 

 "of over 5000 animals," and that Dr. Asa Gray knew quite 

 8cxx) plants by name. The Index to Professor John B. Smith's 

 1909 list of the Insects of New Jersey contains about 4250 

 names of families and genera. Are there any who can place 

 from memory all the generic names of this list in their proper 

 families or even orders? Yet the insect fauna of New Jersey 

 is but a small part of the total fauna of the world. After all, 

 the speaker referred to in our opening sentence may have 

 thought only of the names of Linnean genera. 



This relief does not help out with the authors of 1915, and 

 to them we put the question : Is it fair to expect the readers of 

 a journal publishing on insects of all groups to know what 

 Tephrochlamys is without adding any explanation? If an ex- 

 planatory abbreviation is to be placed after the title, is it fair 

 to throw the burden of supplying it on the editor? If he pub- 

 lishes your paper without any such explanatory abbreviation, 

 isn't it poor editing? Why should his time, quite as valuable 

 as yours, dear author, be consumed with supplying your de- 

 ficiencies? Would he not be justified in rejecting your contri- 

 bution on this ground? 



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