A Penny Weekly Magazine of Natural History. 



No. 68. FEBRUAKY 



WEEKLY OR MONTHLY. 



WHEN we projected the " Young 

 Naturalist " we had the idea 

 that in these days of Express Trains, 

 Electric Telegraphs, and other distance 

 destroying contrivances, young Ento- 

 mologists would welcome a paper 

 that gave a quicker means of com- 

 munication than the Monthly Maga- 

 zines. To a certain extent we have 

 been disappointed in this respect, and 

 we are free to confess, that we doubt 

 whether there has been much in our 

 pages, that would not have been equally 

 useful in a Monthly Magazine. On 

 the other hand there are several ad- 

 vantages that would be secured by a 

 monthly issue to which we will briefly 

 refer. With all the care we could 

 exercise we have not been able alto- 

 gether to eliminate typographical errors, 

 and though our readers will agree that 

 our pages are now much freer from 

 these blunders than they were for- 

 merly, they still occur too often to 

 please either the conductors or readers. 

 We may be able still further to rid the 

 pages of a weekly issue from these 

 blemishes, but we fear it is not possible 



12th, 1881. Vol. 2. 



to do so altogether. If we could get 

 compositors who were well up in 

 scientific uames or technical terms, it 

 might be different, but that, of course, 

 is not possible. A monthly issue 

 would be quite different. There would 

 be abundance of time to correct and 

 revise proofs, and, with proper care, 

 errors should be almost unknown. 

 Many of our subscribers have com- 

 plained that the advertisements on the 

 back page spoiled the magazine for 

 binding, but we have not yet seen our 

 way to dispense? with those profitable 

 items. We hoped before this that our 

 circulation would so far have increased 

 that we would be able to acid a cover 

 to the weekly issue, to which the ad- 

 vertisements, &c, could have been 

 removed, giving an extra page of 

 matter to the magazine. This hope 

 has not yet been realised, and, in fact, 

 the subscribers to monthly parts have 

 increased much more than to the 

 weekly numbers. Another cause of 

 complaint has also been that the plates 

 were much injured by folding when in 

 the weekly numbers, and often that 

 the edges were chafed, and otherwise 

 damaged in transit through the post. 

 Our plates have been much appreciated, 



