LONDON, AND VOYAGE TO SINGAPORE 329 



shortly characterized. During the last fifty years it is prob- 

 able that the described species of birds have doubled in 

 number, yet with slight alteration the whole of these might 

 be included in a volume no larger than that I am referring 

 to. This could be effected by giving only one name to each 

 species (that in most general use), whereas Prince Bonaparte 

 has usually given several synonyms and references to figures, 

 so that these occupy fully as much space as the descriptions. 

 These are quite unnecessary for the collector abroad or at 

 home. What he requires is to have a compact and cheap 

 volume by which he can name, if not all, at least all well- 

 marked species. A series of volumes of this character should 

 be issued by the various national museums of the world (each 

 one taking certain groups) and be kept up to date by annual 

 or quinquennial supplements, as in the case of the admirable 

 " List of Plants introduced to Cultivation during the twenty- 

 one years, 1876 — 1896, issued by the Director of the Kew 

 Gardens." In this very compact volume of 420 pages, 7600 

 species of plants are sufficiently described for identification, 

 while by the use of double columns and thin paper, the volume 

 is only about half the weight of Bonaparte's " Conspectus," 

 in which about the same number of birds are catalogued, but 

 only half of them described. By a division of labour such 

 as is here suggested, the mammals, reptiles, and freshwater 

 fishes might be issued in this form without difficulty. The 

 land and freshwater shells might have separate volumes deal- 

 ing with the eastern and western hemispheres, or with the 

 separate continents, as might the Diurnal Lepidoptera. The 

 other orders of insects are too extensive to be treated in this 

 way, but the more attractive families — as the Geodephaga, the 

 Lamellicornes, the Longicornes, and the Buprestidse among 

 beetles, the bees and wasps among Hysuoptera, might have 

 volumes devoted to them. As these volumes would, if com- 

 pact and cheap, have a very large sale in every civilized 

 country, they might be issued at a very low price, and would 

 be an immense boon to all amateur collectors, travellers, and 

 residents abroad ; and if the chief genera were illustrated by 

 a careful selection of photographic prints, now so easily and 



