OBJECTIONS ANSWERED- 45 



Do not apprehend that this occasional perplexity is 

 any deduction from the attractions of the science: though 

 in itself, in some respects, an evil, it forms in fact to 

 many minds one of the chief of them. The pursuit of 

 truth, in whatever path, affords pleasure : but the in- 

 terest would cease if she never gave us trouble in the 

 chase. Horace Walpole used to say that from a child 

 he could never bring himself to attend to any book that 

 was not full of proper names ; and the satisfaction which 

 he felt in dry investigations concerning noble authors 

 and obscure painters, is experienced by many an ento- 

 mologist who spends hours in disentangling the synonymy 

 of a doubtful species. Nor would it be easy to prove 

 that the wordy researches of the one are not to every 

 practical purpose as valuable as those of the other. We 

 smile at the Frenchman told of by Menage, that was so 

 enraptured with the study of heraldry and genealogy, as 

 to lament the hard case of our forefather Adam, who 

 could not possibly amuse himself with such investiga- 

 tions a . But many an entomologist who has felt the de- 

 licious sensation attendant upon the indisputable ascer- 

 tainment of an insect's name after a long search, will feel 

 inclined to indulge in similar grief for the unhappy lot 

 of his successors, when all shall be smooth sailing in the 

 science. 



But in behalf of those who are more eminently enti- 

 tled to be called entomologists — those who, not content 

 with collecting and investigating insects, occupy them- 

 selves in naming and describing such as have been be- 

 fore unobserved ; in instituting new genera or reforming 

 the old ; and, to say all in one word, in perfecting the 

 a Andrews's Anecdotes, 162. 



