36 



OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 



elaborate disquisitions of Laspeyres, called for by one work 

 alone on the lepidopterous insects of a single district — the 

 Wiener Verzeichniss, which occupy above two hundred octavo 

 pages ^, and must have cost the learned author nearly as 

 much labour of mind as the Ductor Dubitantium did Bishop 

 Taylor. 



Do not apprehend that this occasional perplexity is any 

 deduction from the attractions of the science : though in it- 

 self, 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 interest 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 satis- 

 faction which he felt in dry investigations concerning noble 

 authors, and obscure painters, is experienced by many an en- 

 tomologist 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, w^ho could not possibly amuse 

 himself with such investigations.^ But many an entomo- 

 logist who has felt the delicious sensation attendant upon the 

 indisputable ascertainment 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 entitled to 

 be called entomologists — those who, not content with col- 

 lecting and investigating insects, occupy themselves in naming 

 and describing such as have been before unobserved ; in in- 

 stituting new genera or reforming the old ; and, to say all in 

 one word, in perfecting the system of the science, — still higher 

 claims can be urged. Suppose that at this moment our dic- 

 tionaries of the French and German languages were so very 



1 Illig. Mag. ii. 33. iv. 3. 



2 Andrew's Anecdotes, 152. 



