June-0ct.,i92i Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society 99 



THE IMPORTANT FAUNAL LIST. 



A treatise on geometry is for the benefit of him who has pro- ' 

 gressed to a state of learning where he can grasp its fundamental 

 principles. It is not to be written down to a multiplication table 

 standard. This is precisely the case with any catalogue of in- 

 sects — it should exhibit the status of the science at the time of 

 writing and should not defer to any inferior or obsolescent 

 standard. 



A biological catalogue of forms has three requisites, without 

 which it loses its value as a scientific document. These are: 

 Correctness in nomenclature ; exactness in references ; and ful- 

 ness of distribution. But accuracy in all three is the keynote; 

 without it the labor is vain. 



Records of distribution should likewise have these same three 

 characteristics, for it is of as great importance to record distribu- 

 tion and occurrence reliably as it is to describe species. It is on 

 such records that we build our catalogues. Moreover, these 

 records are of especial importance now in this country, for the 

 encroachments of the cities upon the country, the subjugation of 

 the soil to agriculture, the drainage of marshes, the destruction of 

 forests, and all the endless efforts of man to change the face of 

 nature and disturb its equilibrium are all in progress. These 

 efforts to dominate nature are necessarily bound to change the 

 fauna, in the same degree that its basic form of sustenance in 

 the plant kingdom changes. For example, take the great de- 

 struction of the chestnut trees in recent years caused by disease. 

 Can it be gainsaid that this not only will, but already has, caused 

 the disappearance of sundry insects which the chestnut tree har- 

 bored and nurtured, such as the chestnut weevil? Conservation 

 and modern forestry methods, by eliminating dead, dying and 

 unsound trees, will rapidly restrict and diminish in this country 

 the group of the Aradidae, the myriad beetles and other dwellers 

 under bark of dead trees. 



Is it not as well to know what forms once peopled any given 

 area? 



This last purpose is fulfilled by faunal lists, many of which 

 rise above mere enumerations of names and contain many un- 



