﻿Ill 



us into the field feel their many wants and imperfections, and 

 leave no stone unturned, or hedgerow neglected, in hopes of 

 gaining further information from Nature's storehouses, and if 

 possible adding some other rarity to their collections. For 

 the encouragement of our younger members who may have 

 seen some of the many thousands of insects which were on 

 view at our late Exhibition, and may perhaps have gone 

 away with the idea that there was no more to be done or 

 opportunity for them to be known in the entomological world, 

 I would simply say that the stores are not yet exhausted, nor 

 have Nature's bounties left off flowing, but observant eyes 

 are needed. To prove my case I perhaps may be allowed 

 to read a small quotation from Lord Walsingham's Address 

 to the Entomological Society of London, last week. Speaking 

 of the progress of Entomology and the work that remains to 

 be done, his lordship said : " Some attempts have been made 

 from time to time to arrive at the number of species of true 

 insects of all orders existing on the face of the globe. Dr. 

 John Davy, in a letter to W. Spence, in 1853, estimates that 

 250,000 species of insects exist {Tr. Ent. Soc, n. s. iii. p. 32). 

 The latest of these calculations is perhaps that of my pre- 

 decessor in this chair. At a meeting of the Dumfriesshire 

 and Galloway Natural History Society, held at Dumfries in 

 1883, Dr. Sharp said : 'As the result of a moderate estimate 

 it appears probable that the number of species of true insects 

 existing at present on our globe is somewhere between 

 500,000 and 1,000,000;' and expressed his own opinion, in 

 which I entirely concur, ' that the number probably exceeds 

 the higher of these figures, and will come nearer to 2,000,000.' 

 Dr. Sharp has been good enough to give me the approximate 

 number of distinct species of Coleoptera described up to the 

 present time ; he puts these at about 120,000, basing his cal- 

 culation upon the Munich Catalogue, published in 1 868, which 

 contained 77,000 species, and upon the additional descriptions 

 since published. I think, Gentlemen, there is here plenty of 

 encouragement for all to go forward in this delightful pursuit, 

 and it may be said with truth, that in the study of Natural 

 History we have a pure democracy, where all objects are as 

 real and as beautiful for the toil-worn artisan as for Croesus 

 with all his gold." 



