184 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



of the order which they study. It is true we have a 

 sufficient mass of evidence to enable us to form broad 

 generalities, such as I have indicated in this paper ; but 

 until that evidence is more copious and more complete, it 

 is obvious that they cannot be much more than pro- 

 visional, and it is certain that at present the aim of all 

 students of this — and, indeed, all orders of insects— should 

 be more the accumulation of facts than the exploitation 

 of theories. 



I will therefore conclude these somewhat unsatisfactory 

 and disjointed observations by expressing the belief that 

 among the various functions of the many local natural 

 science and biological societies now in existence among 

 us, none excel in importance the accurate and systematic 

 verification and record of the flora and fauna of their own 

 particular district. As I have already said, many of the 

 feral inhabitants of these islands are swiftly passing; many 

 to a future generation of investigators will be but empty 

 names, and as they disappear, leaving no trace of their 

 sojourn here, they reduce little by little the possible 

 evidence by which we may ever hope to understand the 

 problems of their past migrations and distribution. Much 

 evidence of this kind is undoubtedly beyond recall, but it 

 is obvious to any one who has at all studied the distribu- 

 tion of our Insecta, that had we, instead of the disconnected 

 and often overlapping lists of records of individual students 

 and collectors, the authoritative table of corporate bodies 

 of workers, formed on some comprehensive system, care- 

 fully verified, and recorded in some permanent and pro- 

 gressive method, we should be enabled far more hopefully 

 to face the task of the elucidation of such a tangled web 

 as has formed the subject of our attention this evening. 



