ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 
PHILADELPHIA, Pa., JULY, 1916. 
The Need of Carefulness in Identification. 
One of the common complaints of the time in entomologt- 
cal, nay zoological circles is the difficulty of obtaining the aid 
of specialists to identify material. Every specialist becomes 
flooded, even overwhelmed, with the quantity of animals, of 
insects, which he is desired to determine. Delays of months 
or of years ensue and he who wishes his collections examined 
by competent authority must often send them to the one who 
will report on them the soonest, rather than to the one whose 
knowledge and carefulness are greatest. The conscientious 
specialist himself is obliged to decline to add to the tasks 
which the eager collector or museum officer presses upon him. 
Under all the conditions, it is inevitable that some, not 
really fitted to identify species, take up the work without a 
full realization of all the safeguards to identification that 
honest work demands. It is not enough to compare specimens 
with others already tagged, it may be erroneously. Constant 
recourse must be had to original descriptions and to other 
published sources of exact information. Comparison of speci- 
mens is, indeed, important, for thereby the confounding of 
two or more forms under one name is discovered. The ulti- 
mate appeal is, of course, the comparison with types, but few 
of us have access to these courts of last resort. 
The constant checking up of new material, as well as that 
previously determined (including types where possible), with 
the literature is the obvious duty of everyone who undertakes 
to pass definitely on the systematic status of speciments of nat- 
ural history. 
A Correction for Parnassius smintheus (Lep.). 
I chanced to see a recent issue of ENToMoLocicAL News last night, 
and noticed under your article on Parnassius that I am quoted (Vol. 
XXVli, page 213) as recording smintheus from southeast of Calgary. 
This should be southwest. The correction is rather important as every- 
where southeast of Calgary is open prairie; there the species is not in 
the least likely to occur—F. H. Wotiey Don. 
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