4182 Insects. 



of these classes or the exhaustion of the other. " Heaven lies about 

 us in our infancy," says Wordsworth ; the entomologist may in truth 

 say it still surrounds him in his maturer age, simply because he has 

 not, like those who cavil at him, suffered the cares of life to spread 

 their mist over the meridian of his existence. After all, the value of 

 Entomology lies not so mnch in the boundless extent of materials it 

 affords for mental employment, as in its reflex action on the minds of 

 its students : but this view of the subject deserves a chapter to itself, 

 and some day I may write one. 



My chief object in writing now is to persuade apathetic collectors, 

 and, it may be, some who have never collected insects at all, that 

 however industriously any district may have been worked, it may still 

 be deemed a "terra incognita.' 1 '' On the cover of his 'Nomenclature' 

 Mr. J. F. Stephens records the occurrence at Coombe Wood of Cu- 

 cujus ater, Oliv., upon ground that he had investigated for twenty 

 years and upwards; and in his own garden at Kennington, a spot con- 

 tinually under his eye, he one day found Selandria sericans, Hartig, 

 a new British species of Tenthredinidae. Such cases continually 

 come under our notice, and many instances might be adduced to 

 show that even when man has altered all the features of a country, 

 and " annexed " the land to his dwellings, if he has destroyed some 

 races of insects entirely, he has given an impulse to the propagation 

 of others. But I am now more concerned to state that on the same 

 ground, without very apparent changes, the produce varies in quality 

 and quantity year by year, and that every season will offer something 

 fresh. Then new methods of capture come into operation, and lo ! a 

 new creation seems to arise. Witness the number of species and the 

 quantities of specimens of moths, with which sugar has made us ac- 

 quainted. Lights for attracting require to be more tried in proper 

 localities : many rarities, and probably novelties would result. Dig- 

 ging for pupce is a method that, in the hands of a person like the Rev. 

 Joseph Greene, leads to surprising consequences. Bearing from the 

 larva state has still too few adherents ; a rich harvest is to be gather- 

 ed, especially in the Pyrales, Tortrices, and Tineae. The fumigating 

 principle has also to be more extensively tried ; I have no doubt it 

 will diminish our list of rarities. All this is to be done with Lepido- 

 ptera, and the field in the other Orders, with the exception perhaps of 

 the Coleoptera, is not better occupied. 



Let no Diogenes, then, who occupies himself only with the insects 

 of his native land, fancy he has exhausted his quota, and listlessly re- 

 tire into his tub ; nay, even then, the narrow limits of his observation 



