2670 The Zoologist— July, 1871. 



hundred and seven years; according to the Hebrew text it is sixteen 

 hundred and fifty-six years; while according to the Vatican copy of the 

 Septuagint and to Josephus, the period was two thousand two hundred and 

 sLxty-four and two thousand two hundred and sixty-two years." — P. 26. 



Without expressing any opinion on this subject, or even 

 admitting that dates both in the text and in the margin are 

 unreliable and conflicting, there is still another kind of chronology 

 which can scarcely be disposed of in a similar manner — the 

 chronology of generations and the ages of individual men : if we 

 accept the hypothesis of stretching periods, and generations, and 

 individual lives, as though they were made of India-rubber, and 

 agree to assign three thousand additional years to Methuselah, and 

 three hundred to Moses, and so on with all the patriarchs, we shall 

 not carry the world of thinkers with us, but may possibly get 

 laughed at for our pains ; if, on the other hand, we dispute the 

 genealogies, w^e "raise" a ghost which we cannot "lay." 

 " Incidis ia Scyllam cupiens vitare Chai-ybdim." 



Edward Newman. 



Entomology in 1709. By Edwin Bikchall, Esq. 



An old book intituled " An Essay towards a Natural History of 

 Westmoreland and Cumberland, by Tho. Robinson, Rector of 

 Ously, in Cumberland. Printed by J. L., for W. Freeman, at the 

 Bible agai-.ist the Middle Temple Gate in Fleet Street, 1709," has 

 lately come into my possession and the few pages relating to 

 insects contain such curious illustration of the ideas current 

 one hundred and fifty years ago amongst thinking men that 

 perhaps you will reprint them. 



I am sure I do not wish to raise a laugh at the ex])ense of the 

 worthy divine : his book proves him to have been a loving student 

 of Nature, and that his greatest happiness (to quote his own words) 

 was " to be a Priest in this Magnijicent Palace of the Universe 

 and send up Prayers and Praises to the great Creator of all things, 

 in tlie Behalf of himself and the rest of the Creatures under his 

 Dominion."— P. 81. 



" 1 shall begin our Contemplation with the lowest order in this 

 so ample and large an Inventory, which Naturalists call by the 



