BB (By. THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 
Guide to the Study of Insects, has passed through three large editions, in 3 
-as many years, and is rapidly becoming the text book used in our schools 
and colleges. id 
The result is that a vast degree of attention is concentrated upon En- 
tomology, a hundred fold, I venture to say; more than upon Botany or 
Geology,and a thousand-fold more than upon Ornithology or Mammalogy. 
In these branches, therefore, a disturbance of names would affect scarcely 
-any but special students, and if they do not care to resist innovations, it 
is not our concern. , But, from the nature of the case, in Entomology, 
the advantage gained by disseminating information depends wholly upon 
the precision with which the objects treated of can be identified, and pre- 
-cision can result only from the use of a common Nomenclature. _If one 
Treatise dilates upon the habits of an insect by one name, and the next 
Report under another, and anybody may shift about the names, specific 
and generic, at will, nothing can result but incomprehensibility and disgust. 
What man reading the history of Papilio Asterias, figured with all its 
preparatory stages, and colored to the life, in Harris, and the larva of 
which species he recognises as one of the pests of his garden, will com- 
prehend what the Annual Report of his State Agricultural Society for 1873 
shall say upon Amaryssus Polyxenes? or, his old acquaintance, familiar 
from boyhood, that he has been instructed to call Papilio Turnus, when 
he shall read about Euphceades Glaucus? Mr. Wallace well says, 
“Tntelligible language is wholly founded on stability of Nomenclature, 
and we should soon cease to be able to understand each other’s speech, 
if the practice of altering all names we thought we could improve upon. 
became general.” 
I hope, therefore, that the Entomological section of the American As- 
sociation, at its next Meeting, will adopt a new or amended Code, 
having in mind the exigencies of their own science only, and that full dis- 
cussion and interchange of opinion having meantime been had, such Code 
will express the views of the great majority of the Entomologists of this 
continent. Ifthe Rules are sensible, they will recommend themselves 
to the Entomologists of other countries, and in time secure general 
adoption. 
