2720 Insects. 



Why is this so ? This is an inquiring age : we do not generally take things on trust 

 in this way, but we make diligent search and inquiry in order to prove them. If any- 

 body were to declare to-morrow that our Machaon was not the Machaon of Linneus, 

 how many persons would there be who could at once declare it is P As long as this 

 is the case there is no fixity for our nomenclature ; it is continuously liable to be al- 

 tered ; it stands, as it were, but on the dictum of one man. Now look at the evils of 

 this changing, ever-shifting nomenclature : a person describes accurately, in one year, 

 the habits, food and economy of some species, mentioning it by a Linnean name ; a 

 few years after, this name is found to belong to some other species ; and twenty years 

 afterwards, the probability is that an entomologist, reading this account of the " habits, 

 food and economy," applies it all to the wrong species. The characterosa of last 

 year and the characterosa of this year are rarely the same. The entomologist who 

 collects has the advantage over him who does not, because in collecting he has many 

 opportunities of observing the habits, &c, of species, thereby frequently proving their 

 distinctness or identity : it is therefore extremely desirable that the professed entomo- 

 logist should also be a practical collector, but it does not follow that because he keeps 

 a collection he should keep a whole row of each species : no collector possessing a 

 long string of a species which is to be seen in no other collection can have the 

 slightest claim to the title of entomologist ; he becomes really and truly a miser, and 

 an object of universal contempt. There is now little doubt that the person who hoards 

 for the sake of hoarding ought by rights to be considered as a monomaniac : he may 

 be sane enough on other subjects, but on that subject he is insane ; and I do not 

 think that entomological misers can show any better claim to be considered sane 

 than other misers. The entomologist who collects diligently will soon find that, in 

 spite of all his efforts, some of his insects will be without names, never having been 

 described. How is this to be remedied? He must describe them himself: otherwise, 

 if he name them without describing them, the first name by which such insects are 

 described will upset his manuscript names. In order to describe a species correctly, 

 and to avoid future mistakes, it is necessary to compare it with the species it most 

 closely resembles, and to point out the differences between it and them. The use of 

 a collection is to point out the minute differences between closely allied species ; the 

 abuse is to collect for the sole purpose of saying " I have fifty more species than you," 

 without making any use of them. It frequently happens, however, that collections 

 of this latter class are of use, though not to the owner : they are like libraries of great 

 extent collected by one who cannot read — of great use if accessible to those who can : 

 if inaccessible, or secluded in a provincial town or quiet country village, they are of 

 little use while the owner lives ; but at his death they will probably become the pro- 

 perty of somebody whose notions of a collection are rather different. So collect all 

 ye who are collectors, if not for this generation, for the next ; but if ye be capable of 

 better things, proceed by all means from collecting to entomologising. — H. T. 

 Stainton; Mountsfield, Leicisham, January 4, 1850. 



Bees raising an Artificial Queen. — An instance of bees raising an artificial queen 

 came under my observation during the latter part of the summer of 1847. The hive 

 had lost its queen, and appeared exceedingly distressed in consequence ; and being 

 one I valued on account of the large produce it afforded me, I removed from a cot- 

 tager's hive, doomed to the brimstone pit, a small piece of suitable brood, and placed 

 it over the stock hive, in a small bell glass ; being thereby enabled to observe all their 

 proceedings with facility. A few hours after giving them the comb, they commenced 



