Original Jirtttles, 



REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGICAL SECTION", YOEKSHIRE 

 NATURALISTS' UNION, 1881. 



By E. B. Wrioglesworth, Wakefield, 



SECEETAEY. 



The first duty incumbent upon me, in presenting this Report, is to 

 tender my most sincere thanks to the Section for having selected me as 

 secretary for the past year. Why I should have been the one selected 

 to succeed two such prominent entomologists as Mr. G. T. Porritt, 

 F.L.S., and Mr. S. D. Bairstow, F.L.S., surprised no one perhaps 

 more than myself. I feel most keenly at this moment my position, 

 knowing, as I do, my almost total ignorance of the main branches of 

 the scientific inquiry in which this section of the Union is engaged — ■ 

 i.e. macro- and micro-lepidoptera. I am conscious, too, of many 

 defects in another branch of entomological research entrusted to me, 

 but to which no regard has as yet been paid by the council in issuing 

 the Transactions, viz , coleoptera. One feels daily the want of assist- 

 ance, but this want is in a great measure surmounted by the publication 

 of lists of species, localities, and, more especially, descriptions, and 

 dates of capture. A description of an insect not sufficiently or 

 generally known, no matter of what family, would go far to assist 

 workers in the endeavour to recognise species already in their posses- 

 sion, or to obtain specimens of it, and thereby give greater stimulus 

 to the closer examination of duplicate specimens, which in ' some 

 instances, owing to the reticence of the possessors in seeking out some 

 eligible entomologist to name them, remain unknown until by some 

 stroke of fortune they fall into the hands of such a one who is gifted 

 with the power of discrimination. 



My object, upon first commencing this report, was to confine myself 

 exclusively to the insects which had been observed or captured within 

 the province of the Union during its rambles, but as many noticeable 

 species have occurred under other circumstances, I was led most 

 willingly to extend my field of operation. 



Notwithstanding the unpropitious weather, the extremely hard 

 winter of 1880-81, and the backward state of the spring, our entomo- 

 logists do not appear to have kept their note books entirely unsoiied ; 

 in fact, it may be that the past season, though uncomfortably blank in 

 some forms of ordinary appearance, will be looked back upon as the 

 producer of others which during the previous five years, had scarcely 

 been observed. 



K S., Vol, vil— May, 1882. 



