( xxxvi ) 



T have heen unable to find any notice of the death of any 

 other important foreign Entomologist, so that the foreign 

 obituary is even more scanty than the home one, and the 

 century has certainly begun well for Entomologists. 



In the "Journal of the Linnean Society " (vol. xxvi, p. 

 562), Professor Poulton quotes me as having said at a meeting 

 of the Entomological Society, held in the summer of 1897, that 

 I thought " there was too much assumption about the current 

 theories of Mimicry." To a certain extent, I confess, I am 

 of the same opinion, but only as regards matters of detail. I 

 entirely disagree with those writers who would lightly set 

 aside the whole subject, and who refuse to see in the most 

 striking facts anything but accidental coincidences. It is 

 quite true that we ought to proceed carefully, but the wildest 

 deductions from observed and verified facts are much better 

 than mere stagnation, and I think that most of us will agree 

 with the words of Professor Meldola in his Presidential Address 

 to the Society in January 1896 : after referring to a naturalist 

 of the old school, William Swainson, who, writing in 1834, 

 speaks of the observance of Nature, without making any 

 attempt to generalise the facts so acquired, as " a mere 

 amusement, fascinating indeed and even useful, but totally 

 disconnected with the objects of philosophic science," he con- 

 tinues as follows : — " Now I venture to think that entomology 

 in this country has been retarded in its development for want 

 of a little more of this -* philosophic science'; by an unwilling- 

 ness on the part of our most active workers to give rein to 

 the imagination — by an over-cautiousness which is damping to 



the speculative faculty. It appears to me that in entomology 



we have arrived at a state where we are suffering from a 

 plethora of facts ; if we are not in a position to explain every- 

 thing connected with the development, life-histories, instincts, 

 classification and distribution of insects as a class of animals, 

 we are at any rate in a position, speaking paradoxically, to 

 know what we want to know, and I do not see how we are 

 going to advance unless a more generous use is made of 

 hypothesis as a scientific guide." No one knows better than 



