THE YOUNG NATUKALIST. 



9 



series of everything he could obtain freely, or which the dealers in insects 

 could obtain for him, and two or more specimens of some species which he 

 had not room for in his drawers. The presence of these doubtful species, of 

 course, takes away all interest in and all absolute value as British from every 

 specimen in the collection. But worse than this he was engaged, some 

 time before his death, in re- arranging the whole collection by the unfor- 

 tunate list of obsolete names recently issued. A few drawers are completed, 

 and, T am told, several others are emptied into store boxes. As he saw the 

 error he had made by using a list he did not like, he shortly before his 

 death commenced to rectify it, and so intensified the difficulty of again 

 getting the collection in order. It is true he has labelled the specimens in 

 his drawers, and this is a redeeming point, as they can all be removed 

 when the collection is re-arranged — but who is do .this?— -to remove a 

 full row of every British macro, not only from the drawer or the store box it 

 is in, and place it where it should be in the arrangement chosen, is not an 

 easy undertaking, but until this is done this grand collection — worth one 

 thousand pounds — is worse than useless, it is misleading. 



I am told there is a clique of insect collectors who use the obsolute names 

 Mr. Cooke had adopted for a few of his earlier drawers, and then rejected, but as 

 I see no likelihood that British entomologists will ever use them, it behoves 

 our leaders to let us have our public museum collections available for correct 

 reference as early as possible. Mr. Greening's undisturbed drawers are 

 arranged by the French system of Boisduval and Guenee, which is based 

 upon the affinity of the larvae, modified here and there by Mr. Greening, in 

 accordance with his own knowledge of the morphology of the groups 

 or species, but always on the lines of the French system of arrange- 

 ment. These drawers exhibited intact alongside the drawers which had been 

 re-arranged by Mr. Cooke, shewed to great advantage the superiority and 

 natural appearance of the French system over the German as adopted 

 by the " Entomologist List," when viewed together on a large, long table. 

 It is a great advantage to students to have good modern lists to refer to, in 

 which the figures and descriptions of ancient writers have been carefully re- 

 vised, and when the figures are bad or the descriptions crude and indefinite, 

 the names given to them are rejected, and not applied at random. See 

 M. GueneVs introduction to his great work on " The Noctuse of the World/' 



I have never taken kindly to the " Entomologist List." My knowledge 

 of what had been done to clear up the nomenclature of our beautiful study, 

 prevented me going back to the obsolete, indefinite, or variety names — given 

 as specific — by ancient empirical writers, and when told I must use the 

 " Entomologist List," by the Editor of the Entomologist, for all my comunica- 



