The Zoologist — May, 1867. 723 



Variation resulting from sex, alternation of generations, climate and 

 pairs, is an evidence of the existence of certain absolute laws. 

 Abnormal variation seems rather to result from a departure from those 

 laws, or to be exceptional ; and I would here take the liberty of 

 asserting my belief that exceptions often afford a direct clew to the 

 rules which they seem to nullify, and that he who disregards the 

 exception is incompetent fully to understand and appreciate the rule. 



Now, turning to your little volume, which I always read with 

 reverence and love, you will, T am sure, pardon me when I say that I 

 think you have been unfortunate in selecting the Coleoptera as 

 illustrating your views. I am aware coleopterists pride themselves on 

 the greater facilities with which a coleopteron may be examined ; it 

 has generally no clothing to interfere with the thorough investigation of 

 its external structure ; but the coleopterist has plumed himself too much 

 on this ; he has been content with a perfect knowledge of external 

 structure, and therefore has given but little thought to sex, and none 

 whatever to life-history. Now the lepidopterist will be found 

 assiduously studying the female parent in the act of oviposition, will 

 minutely examine the egg, count its longitudinal costae and transverse 

 striae, number the days before the larva emerges, and when it has 

 emerged note every ecdysis, and every change of form and colour 

 incident to each ; observe in what manner it prepares for pupation, 

 and note with painstaking accuracy the form and colour of the pupa: 

 finally, he watches it burst the serecloths in which it has been fettered, 

 and assume its ultimate perfection. He thus becomes thoroughly 

 acquainted with his subjects before they attain that point in their 

 existence at which the investigations of the coleopterist begin. He 

 knows that all the produce of one batch of eggs should have one 

 name: they may vary infinitely in size, form and colour, but if the 

 parent be Chelonia caja or Abraxas grossulariata so are the progeny:' 

 he never thinks of dividing them : you know, my dear sir, how different 

 all this is with the coleopterist. You know better than I do, how 

 that an additional stria on an elytron, a darker or paler tip to an 

 antenna, is amply sufficient to raise a bembid or a staph to specific 

 rank : you know the coleopterist dotes on these differences; and will 

 print us a hundred pages at the shortest notice in which these 

 differences are to him towers of strength. No lepidopterist has created 

 a species out of either Chelonia caja or Abraxas grossulariata : any 

 coleopterist would have created a hundred had the same difference 

 occurred among beetles, for he could not have consulted life-history. 



