MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 239 



We apologise to the author if we have misunderstood or wrongly translated 

 him, but the gist of his remarks is apparently that the close study of a genus 

 shows that the limits of species are not, in Notonecta, definite, cannot be fixed 

 by Morphological characters and that in fact a species as a single definite 

 entity does not exist. Probably all entomologists will agree with the author 

 but not every one will, in the present state of Science, push his conclusions to 

 the practical test and cease to use specific names. It is in every group im- 

 possible to fix the limits of species ; two authors naturally cannot agree, as it 

 is not a matter of fact but of personal interpretation of fact, and the two have 

 not before them the same series of facts. The end we seem to be travelling 

 to is chaos and confusion, because no systematic nomenclature will be possible 

 without referring to a Notonecta say, as " totonecta glauca, near to furcata, 

 Kashmir summer form." 



This is however yet to come as few genera have been studied in the detail 

 that Mons. Delcourt brings to it ; the moral is to deal lightly and tolerantly 

 with names and with author's interpretations of them, to realise that system- 

 atist's species are not real species, and to make a bad job as good as we can by 

 getting to a reasonable method of classification and nomenclature which will 

 make intercommunication possible between workers and yet not violate too 

 much the natural " species " evolved by Nature and which we must try to 

 define as working entities if progress is to be made at all. 



At the present time a " name " is merely a reference to a full description by 

 a specialist and not anything more at all ; the fact that two specimens are 

 given two specific names means that one specimen is referred back to one 

 description and the other to another ; it will be years before specific and 

 generic names can convey any ideas of relationship and descent, and it is use- 

 less trying, at present, to make them do so. 



The layman is naturally mystified by names, and attributes too much im- 

 portance to them, as, unfortunately, do many systematists and workers. They 

 are conventions and to be treated as such, to be altered and molested as little 

 as possible, and specific names above all to be regarded simply as reference 

 terms of a wholly artificial kind, due to our profound ignorance not only of 

 what constitutes a species but what species there really are in the world 

 around us. 



(/). — " Indian Insect Life " 



We take this opportunity of drawing attention to a serious mistake in this 

 volume ; fig. 331 on page 495 should be entitled Hypsipyla robusta, Mo., and 

 be placed on page 514, where this species is mentioned. The error has been 

 pointed out by Mr E. E. Green {Tropical Agriculturist, December 1909), who 

 has also drawn attention to minor misprints most of which will be obvious to 

 our readers. 



(g). — The " Coleopterorum Catalogues." 



We have received the first five parts of this publication edited by S. Schen- 

 kling with a list of contributors well known as specialists in the different 



