VI PREFACE. 



ray most valued supporters. It were idle for me to repudiate any 

 participation in the sentiments to which I have alluded : the entire 

 management of the 'Zoologist' for fifteen years is the unanswerable 

 evidence of this. But, were there nothing objectionable in Dr. 

 Knox's views, it must be obvious, even to the Doctor himself, that 

 the ' Zoologist ' is not a medium for their expression : with polemics 

 and politics the ' Zoologist ' can have nothing to do. 



There is another feature in the present volume which must not be 

 passed over without explanation, the irregular appearance and final 

 cessation of the Reports of the Meetings of the Entomological So- 

 ciety. I am fully aware that the executives of our learned Societies 

 in London have long held that their Proceedings, like juvenile wines, 

 improve by keeping, and that they have rarely indulged us with a 

 draught of knowledge until it has been some years in bottle. In 

 prominent contradistinction to these, the Entomological Society took 

 an exactly opposite course, and became really remarkable for the 

 promptitude and accuracy with which copious reports of its Pro- 

 ceedings were circulated throughout the country in the pages of the 

 c Zoologist.' Without attaching blame to any one, I may state that 

 the commencement of irregularity in the transmission of these Re- 

 ports led to remonstrance on my part and reply on the part of the 

 Society; farther delay, farther remonstrance and farther reply; until at 

 last I voluntarily abandoned all idea of claiming these Reports as I 

 had previously done under an agreement with a former Council of the 

 Society. Still the monthly publication of these Reports is so 

 favourite a project of my own that I will not relinquish it without 

 another effort, and I entertain some idea of becoming my own 

 reporter, and of supplying a series of Reports, next year, of the 

 scientific doings of a Society in which so many of my subscribers 

 have always taken the warmest interest. 



The study of Zoology has been progressing with us favourably and 

 steadily ; but I could wish, and have often expressed the wish, that 

 our attention should not be so much confined to the acquisition of 



