XIV PREFACE. 



the prescriptive code have presented themselves. In connexion with 

 the subject of nomenclature, I must take this opportunity of strongly 

 recommending Doubleday's List of British Lepidoptera, which has 

 just issued from the press : it is the most carefully elaborate publica- 

 tion of the kind I have ever seen, and has cost the author a really 

 enormous amount of time and labour : I sincerely hope that all ento- 

 mologists will adopt it for their arrangement, and that all future lists 

 will be written as well as printed on a similar plan. 



My readers will, I trust, be pleased with the regularity with which 

 official Reports of the Zoological, Entomological and Microscopical 

 Societies are now published in these pages. It has always been my 

 wish to accomplish this, but I have heretofore met with considerable 

 difficulty in obtaining the reports. It is gratifying to find so great 

 an increase of visitors to the gardens of the Zoological Society, in 

 Regent's Park, — an increase, I believe, almost entirely attributable to 

 the zeal, judgment and assiduity exercised by Mr. Mitchell, in his 

 office of Secretary. I consider these gardens a valuable addition to 

 the rational amusements of our citizens, and highly deserving of pub- 

 lic patronage and support. The Entomological Society appears also 

 to be prospering; and I trust we shall find, when the President 

 delivers his annual address, that great increase in the number of 

 members has taken place. To the Microscopical Society we are in- 

 debted for completely negativing (Zool. 2616) the extraordinary hypo- 

 thesis that cholera is caused by a fungus : it seems that the originators 

 and supporters of this hypothesis erred simply from a deficiency of 

 knowledge; the suspected bodies being of various but well-ascertained 

 origin ; existing at all seasons and in a diversity of media ; being- 

 taken into the stomach with bread and other ordinary food; and 

 passing through the intestinal canal, under ordinary circumstances, 

 quite as abundantly and as unchanged as during the prevalence of 



cholera. 



EDWARD NEWMAN. 



!», Devonshire Street, Bishopspatc, 

 November II, 1K4<>. 



