3118 Tuer ZooLtocist—JuLy, 1872. 
After this simple but quite sufficient announcement, Mr. Dunning 
recites the authors who have written of this particular Acentropus 
niveus, under whatever name. He begins with Olivier, and canters 
gently through a whole regiment of the learned,—Stephens, Curtis, 
Westwood, Stephens a second time, Westwood a second time, 
Boitard, Brown, Scott, Brown a second time, Zeller, Speyer, 
Milliére, and Newman; the last-named alone he honours with the 
epithet of his “friend”; in fact, to use a simile of Chateaubriand, 
Newman is “the worm with which he baits his hook”; he bestows 
on Newman frequent and highly appreciative notice, that does 
infinite credit to his head and heart: to his head, because it dis- 
plays reasoning powers of the highest order; to his heart, because 
a strain of playful banter pervades the dissertation wherever the 
name of his “ friend” occurs: he follows the advice of the humane 
Walton to the student who is receiving instructions for adjusting 
the living worm on the hook, “ Handle your worm as though you 
loved him.” ‘There is none of that sour-krout phraseology, which 
now, alas! so frequently defiles entomological writing, and disgusts 
those who are beginning to study the science. Mr. Dunning uni- 
formly treats his “friend” with courtesy and kindness, although 
always, it must be admitted, with proper firmness: he gives his 
“friend” no chance of escape; writhe and wriggle as he may, the 
barbed hook still holds. Herit lateri uncus lethalis. 
« But in 1872, Newman returns to the subject, and after informing us 
that ‘it is nothing more than a conventional idea, or sometimes a conve- 
nient assumption,’ that wing-scales are confined to Lepidoptera, he adds, 
that ‘ the assumption is utilized now and then to set up some hobby, such 
for instance as the Lepidopterous nature of Acentria, which assumption 
remains standing only until some one of more extended or more careful 
powers of observation, or more skilled in logical deductions, knocks it down 
again ’(Entom. vi. 10). 
“We all know that every periodical has a ‘some one’ who is necessarily, 
and ex officio, of more extended and more careful powers of obsérvation, 
and more skilled in logical deductions, than any other one who presumes 
to differ from him. But making due allowance for the ‘ conventional idea’ 
of the omniscience, and the ‘convenient assumption’ of the infallibility of 
editors in general (and speaking in all good-humour, and with every respect 
for my friend), I cannot characterize this sentence otherwise than as 
editorial ‘bounce.’ It was no part of my plan to have given the preceding 
sketch, but I have been led to do so by reading the remarks of the editor 
of the ‘ Entomologist,’ which I have just quoted. Of course, Newman may 
