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Third. — You are asked what is the distribution of a bug in your 

 locality, look at your series, turn up the numbers, and you have 

 it at once, with such further information as to geological forma- 

 tion and habitat as the diary affords. 



Fourth. — It enables you, in the last column, to note what has 

 happened to the insect, if it is compared with the type or a co-type, 

 or a paratype. You will sec my catalogue is arranged No., date, 

 name, locality, remarks — five columns, and a volume this size 

 roughly answers for 4,200 insects. 



Synonymy. 



Besides my diary for current events and my catalogue of 

 data, I have a loose-leaf recording book. In this book I keep 

 all the information I can get hold of about any insect arranged 

 under that insect and the families and genera are arranged serially. 

 It is, in the first place, a synonymic catalogue, in the second a 

 repository for extracts from books and magazines and for copies 

 of figures, localities, food plants and the like, and brings the 

 scattered fragments of information relating to an insect : nto 

 relation with each other. It also enables one to keep a steady 

 record of such new descriptions as may have come out. A 

 writes a big catalogue in 1901, in which he gives current reference 

 to all described insects of a family to that date. The immediate 

 result is that knowledge to that point having been focussetf, 

 workers start at once and afresh from that point with more new 

 descriptions and observations, as you come across them down they 

 go, or a reference to them goes in your loose-leaf record, and 

 when your turn comes to work at the family or genus, you can 

 feel fairly comfortable that you are not describing as new some- 

 thing done a year or two back, which you have lost reference to 

 or forgotten. 



Besides, a good library is very expensive, and it is often 

 exceedingly useful to have copies of well-known or critical figures 

 at hand, and very useful to have good drawings of types at your 

 command. I only wish the loose-leaf system had been invented 

 when I started collecting years ago. 



Arranging. 



When arranging your insects make up your mind what you 

 intend to show. If distribution, arrange the insects geographically 

 with a label showing the place of each, say the country or county. 

 If variation, start with the typical form, and grade your insects 

 to show the intermediate to the extreme varieties and aberrations ; 

 labelling the forma typica, the intermediate transitus ad 

 — ? , the abberrations or varieties their regular name, 

 don't put the extremes together to contrast them, it may be 

 startling, it is not instructive. If both, have a separate drawer 

 or series, but you must in that case have a very long series. 



F 



