[July 1883. BULLETIN BROOKLYN ENTOM. SOC. VOL. VI. 35 
Noli me tangere. 
Ifa. man works in any section of the Natural history for years 
forming hereby ideas of his own, he may, continuing his work on the 
basis of such ideas, very easily be induced to consider his ideas as 
dogmas. ; 
Now another man applying his studies on the same branch may 
conceive ideas diagonally opposed to those of the first mentioned man 
and giving vent to them, this one is too ready to oppose that one ; if wise 
he debates the matter composedly, but alas! too often he considers those 
heretical ideas, not as an attack against his dogmas, but as a personal 
attack. 
Noli me tangere! Don’t touch me! Ido not speak of such low 
fellows, who having built up a system, somewhat unnatural of course, with 
great display of hard labor and brain-ruining effort, and upon finding 
things, that will in no ways fit in their systematic arrangement or that will 
destroy the whole system, will there upon rather crush and destroy the 
meddlesome species, which dares to make void and vain all the results 
of their great labor, than confess frankly that they. are wrong. 
One by predilection a describer of new things, will look always 
“rather for differences than for similiarities”, he will create new genera 
and species at wholesale, while annother man working in the same line 
but looking rather for similiarities than for differences will find many 
genera of the former gentlemen scarcely worthy to be considered as 
species and the new species of the same scarcely variations. 
Then an endless war begins and who is right ? 
I can not see what an immense benefit the world at large and the 
Entomologist specifically may derive from the fact that a rubbed off, 
broken species be named ‘‘Possdilitas n. gen. probadilis n. sp. I guess 
we are not in such a hurry to have things named to be possibly sucha 
species and belonging probably to such a genus. We always will wait 
willingly tll: with more material on peed a ‘more. proper decision may 
be cree: 
Yet for many a great mind it is an invincible temptation to have his 
own dear ‘‘mihi” appended to a poor creature that the chance has laid in 
his hands, and if any dare differ from him, thenl!! ——~*F. G. Schaupp. 
