1872. ] 255 
Pauline Frederic. Bnt the generic name and the specific name of an object are 
two distinct nouns, the specific noun representing the specific qualities, the generic 
noun the generic qualities. Nobody objects to a masculine generic name being used 
in a family of which the name has a feminine termination; and I cannot see that 
there is any greater barbarism in Lycena, Minimus, than in Staphylinide, Staphy- 
linus.—D. SHarp, Eccles, Thornhill, Dumfries: February, 1872. 
Obituary. 
James Charles Dale, M.A., F.L.S. ‘On the 6th (February) inst., at Glanville’s 
Wootton, James Cuartes Dar, aged 80.” So ran the obituary notice in the 
daily papers. To us, the significance of these few words is that the oldest, or 
nearly the oldest, British entomologist has passed away ; not one who in his early 
years followed entomological pursuits and afterwards abandoned them, but a 
consistent student of Nature from his youth till his death, for letters received but 
a few months since proved that Mr. Dale at 80 was as enthusiastic an entomologist 
as he was known to be in his youth: Though latterly complaining that stiffness of 
the joints rendered the capture and setting of insects not so easy as it used to be, 
still we had no reason to expect news of his decease. To us, comparative beginners 
in entomology, his letters and conversation excited considerable wonderment. He 
was wont to talk of captures made 40 years since as of events of yesterday : to the 
veteran entomologist time seemed of no account. We well remember only a few 
years since the manner in which he related, with a perfectly boyish delight, how 
he had got the better of our chief Natural History Society. He became a 
Fellow in 1818, and compounded for his Annual Subscription; and, as this compo- 
sition is based upon the principle of 10 years purchase, he had thus received 
its equivalent more than five times over. In his company (and he was always 
ready to press his hospitality upon any entomologist who might be desirous of 
consulting his collections), one became aware of a mingling of the past with the 
present to a marvellous degree. Mr. Dale was a ‘British’ entomologist par 
ewcellence, and one of the very few who devote themselves to all orders. His collec- 
tions, the accumulations of his long life, are enormous, and almost every specimen is 
80 labelled, that its exact history, whether it be of yesterday, or fifty years old, was 
traceable by its possessor in a moment. ‘The notes published by himself are 
chiefly short, and scattered through the periodicals of nearly half a century. But 
it is in connection with John Curtis that the name of J. C. Dale will be handed 
down to generations of entomologists yet unborn. In the ‘ British Entomology’ 
his name is on almost every page, and it was frum his collections that Curtis derived 
a vast portion of the material from which his elaborate work was drawn up. The 
two worked hand in hand, and their names came to be considered as almost 
Synonyms. Now that Curtis’s own collection is unfortunately transported to the 
Antipodes, the Dalean collection is of special importance, for it enables the student 
in very many cases to verify Curtisian species that would be otherwise doubtful. 
But for Curtis, Mr. Dale’s name would probably be scarcely known beyond 
our own shores, for he seldom entered the arena of scientific controversy. He was 
emphatica ly an English country squire, but,—and the instances are tolerably 
rare—one with a taste for entomology; and of this taste he made no concealment. 
Only a few years since we heard from his own lips, narrated with considerable 
nr 
