Insects. 2719 



verdure is fresher. In the Una wood, within ten minutes walk from 

 my house, the scenery is most splendid : a lofty forest borders the 

 road, which is open and broad ; but you see no tree trunks, for a dense 

 drapery of climbing plants sweeps down from the tops of the trees to 

 the ground : aloft the feathery heads of the palms Assai, Jupati, Miriti, 

 Murumusu and Urucuri peep out. 



" You wish me to preserve the skulls of animals : I have rather 

 neglected this hitherto. On our voyage up the Tocantins we had ab- 

 solutely no convenience for doing such matters, and it is very rarely 

 we meet with Mammalia. There are plenty of animals (monkeys, &c.) 

 always on sale in the city ; to walk through some streets is like visit- 

 ing a menagerie : there are a vast variety of parrots chattering Portu- 

 guese, and some most rare and beautiful monkeys : the other morning 

 I saw a lovely little bluish gray one, no larger than a kitten a month 

 old ; it had white whiskers, and was very gentle. In the woods I 

 sometimes see little dusky fellows scampering aloft amongst the 

 branches: generally they are in flocks, and appear to be playing 

 ' follow the leader,' making prodigious leaps one after the other. 

 They are chiefly of the genera Cebus, Midas and Ateles ; the Midas 

 ursulus, a very small one, being common." 



(To be continued). 



On the Use and Abuse of a Collection of Insects. — I imagine all persons commence 

 a collection of insects with the notion that they are thereby making something pretty 

 to look at ; yet the desire to have them named and arranged treads very closely on 

 the heels of the desire to form a collection ; and this naming and arranging is no 

 child's play, no baby-work : if they are to be named, they must be named correctly ; 

 if they are to be arranged, whose arrangement should be followed? In the first place, 

 how is the collector to ascertain the names of the species he has collected ? He may 

 consult books, and refer to descriptions or figures, or he may compare specimens with 

 some collection which is supposed to be rightly named ; and nine-tenths of our collec- 

 tions, I regret to say, are named in this latter way : they are copies of copies ; they 

 have never been compared with the original : if there was a blunder in the copy, still 

 they copy it, having no notion of correcting it : the consequence has been that our 

 collections of Lepidoptera, and probably of other orders, were a disgrace to the age 

 and to the country. This is now to be rectified : a new era has dawned ■. a new 

 Catalogue of British Lepidoptera (except the Fumea:) has appeared : all collections 

 are to be named and arranged by this,— but are they not still all to be copies ? Who 

 refers to the original descriptions to prove their correctness ? Every one takes on 

 trust the saying of this or that entomologist, and names his cabinet accordingly. 



