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position our fauna should occupy in this quarter of the globe. It 

 is, of course, perfectly natural that our interest should first centre 

 upon insects indigenous to our own country ; but that we should 

 rest satisfied with this, and refuse to extend our researches into 

 other European countries, savours to me too much of the " insular 

 prejudices," which are so often and so justly attacked by fore- 

 igners, and which, in most other departments of science, have long 

 since been abandoned. I do not mean to say, with Mr. Bates, 

 that I think it practicable for any one man either to study or to 

 make large collections of the whole of the Pahearctic Fauna — (Mr. 

 Bates means, of course, the insect fauna) — nor do I consider that 

 it might be done with a " trifling outlay of pocket money ; " but 

 I do not see why each of us should not, in his own favourite order 

 or orders, acquire continental types for purposes of comparision, 

 and for the observation of the results of varying climatic and 

 geological conditions ; or even to place them side by side in his 

 cabinet with purely British species, which, be it remembered, con- 

 tain frequently Scotch, Welsh, Manx and Irish insects, differing 

 from English quite as much as continental forms of the same 

 species. It is true that the adoption of such a system might 

 involve the curtailment of those whole row series in which so 

 many collectors delight, but would it not at the same time, in 

 most cases, render the somewhat monotonous file of unvarying 

 ones more interesting. In the case of such inconstant insects as 

 the Cidarias — russata and immanata — it is obviously an advantage 

 to have at least a whole row of each ; but where the varieties, or 

 the aberrations from the normal type, are rare — as for instance, in 

 the Lucanidae — it would surely add to the interest of a collection 

 to import into it whatever little variation the foreign types could 

 afford. The dealer would no longer find it so easy to get twenty 

 shillings for an insect whose prototype — varying perhaps infinite- 

 simally — might be had for half a franc on the other side of the 

 channel. But then the greater demand for foreign specimens 

 would soon compensate him for any loss he might sustain in this 

 way. And what a new interest and incentive it would give to a 

 holiday trip abroad, if continental forms of English species were 



