9004 Insects. 
credit is due to him for his intention to simplify the difficulties of 
conflicting nomenclature by endeavouring to place our system on the 
same footing as that of continental entomologists (who are neverthe- 
less anything but unanimous on this point among themselves), yet I 
cannot refrain from observing it is too evident that he wishes to de- 
preciate English work; Marsham, Kirby, Stevens and more recent 
authors, being deposed in favour of foreign describers with a very few 
exceptions throughout the Catalogue in question: and, even when 
thus treated, stigmatized by notes of interrogation being placed before 
the names of their species, as if it were impossible to determine the 
insects referred to by them from their descriptions and collections. 
I fear Mr. Crotch has simply altered the names in order to try and 
extinguish troublesome claimants for priority over his Teutonic 
favourites, and that he has not endeavoured to make out the species 
in question by the means at the disposal of every one willing to make 
use of them; had he done so he would not have had occasion to place 
queries before so many species, of which several are easy to determine. 
Let the first instance in the genus Homalota (wherein the notes of 
interrogation placed before Stephensian species are very numerous) be 
taken as an example, viz. H. vicina. 
Has Mr. Crotch placed this insect, with a prefixed query, as a syno- 
nym of H. umbonata, Erichs. (to which it is confessedly anterior in 
date), because, after using his best powers of investigation upon the 
descriptions in Stephens’ ‘Illustrations’ and ‘Manual, he is not 
satisfied that both names refer to the same species? 
Passing over the additional evidence of the types in the Stephensian 
Collection, which any one can examine, is not even the following ab- 
breviated description in the ‘ Manual’ (p. 360), combined with the 
sectional characters given by. Stephens, sufficient for identification ? 
2807. Shining black, smooth, disc of elytra, tibiae and tarsi reddish ; 
antenne with terminal joint elongate; male with a dorsal tubercle 
on the second segment of the abdomen, penultimate segment 
thickly punctured, female smooth; length one line and a half. 
Of the enormous number of species known of this genus I am con- 
fident there is but this one to which the above description could 
possibly apply; and Mr. Crotch pays his own powers of discernment 
a very poor compliment by confessing, as he does, that -he cannot 
make out his insect by it. Others, however, have taken the trouble to 
make these investigations, and have satisfied themselves of the sound- 
ness of the evidence that can be adduced, before bringing forward and 
supporting the Stephensian names (amongst others), but the publica- 
