Entomological Society. 5523 



very valuable to him) to the ruthless custody of the post office, I should not even now 

 have been able to bring under your notice the following illustration of the fate which 

 appears to be the almost inevitable attendant on the ascertained indigenousness of a 

 species, namely, condemnation to trail evermore behind it an unsightly, trouble-giving 

 train of synonyms. The nomenclature of the present insect will now stand thus: — 



Bledius unicornis, Germar, Erichson, Gen. et Spec. Staph, vii. 764, 7 (1840). 

 Oxytelus unicornis, Germar, Fauna Insect. JEurop. fas. xii. f. 3 (1828). 

 Bledius hispidus, Parf.it, Zoologist, 5409 (1857). 

 Bledius cornutus, F. Smith, in litteris. 



Hence it is seen that a species universally recognised abroad during upwards of a 

 quarter of a century, well figured and admirably described, is no sooner found in Bri- 

 tain than, in a few short weeks, it is shackled with two synonyms,— a fact which cer- 

 tainly reflects no credit on the entomologists of this country, and which cannot tend 

 to augment the respect of our continental brethren, or to raise Entomology from the 

 low level in the scale of the Sciences which she is doubtless doomed to occupy until 

 her votaries consent to devote some share of that shrewdness and zeal which they so 

 conspicuously manifest in the acquisition of specimens to the arrival at and adoption 

 of a correct and legitimate nomenclature, and the higher objects to which collections 

 should be subservient, and to which this is assuredly the true prelude. In conclusion, 

 I will observe that Bledius unicornis was captured by Mr. Wollaston at the Chesil 

 Bank and Exmouth Warrens several years back, and that I long since thus designated 

 the specimens in that gentleman's collection." 



Read the following, by Mr. Newman :— 



Note on Pairs of Species of British Lepidoptera which are Heterocampous arid Isomyious. 



" I have endeavoured to prove that Nature has a tendency to assimilate, in the 

 external characters of the adult, certain beings, which, in the earlier, or, as we may 

 express it, preparatory stages of their existence, have little or no apparent similarity to 

 each other. Such assimilations, when they do occur, are always in pairs, and familiar 

 examples will occur to every one in the placental and marsupial sucklers, the hesthoge- 

 nous and gymnogenous birds, the metamorphotic and immutable reptiles, the vivipa- 

 rous and spawning fishes. Descending from larger to smaller groups, we find 

 such pairs becoming still more pronounced, and the supposed law or principle still 

 more strikingly exhibited. It has occurred to me that such a law or principle cannot 

 be partial: if it exist in Nature it must be general, and must descend even to species. 

 After a moment's reflection it struck me, further, that the European, and perhaps 

 even the British, Lepidoptera might afford a ready means of testing the value of my 

 theory. I argued to myself that if such pairs existed in Europe they must be known 

 to a Guenee; if in Britain they must be familiar to a Doubleday, a Shepherd or a 

 Douglas. Both on the Continent and in Britain, Lepidoptera have been studied with 

 a perseverance and a success that has far outstripped the results arising from atten- 

 tion to any other insects; bees, ichneumons, Brachelytra,Khynchophora, although the 

 objects of especial research, are literally unknown in comparison with our indigenous 

 Lepidoptera, and this principally because Lepidoptera are studied in all their stages, 

 the others only in one: the study of Macro-Lepidoptera has become deeply philoso- 

 phical , that of other insects at present remains comparatively superficial. Hence I 



