THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S 
WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER. 
No. 221.] SATURDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1860 [Price l<i. 
instability. 
“We lose time,” said a well-known 
writer, “ by beginning plans and studies 
which we never complete.” And we 
fear that the sin of instability may 
be charged against a large proportion 
of our readers. 
The unstable man takes up a pur- 
suit, follows it a short distance, and 
then abandons it for another, which 
in its turn will be treated in the 
same way. “Never begin anything 
without carrying it through” is a prin- 
ciple that cannot be too earnestly 
recommended to our younger readers. 
We cannot now walk a single day 
through the streets of London without 
meeting those who were once entomo- 
logists, but have since abandoned the 
pursuit of insects, and have taken up 
some new hobby — Geology, Photo- 
graphy, &c. — which in due lime they 
will likewise desert. A cloud of sad- 
ness comes over us as we look at the 
faces of these quondam entomologists, 
and reflect that “if the habit of entering 
on what is not carried out and com- 
pleted be allowed in early life the 
evil increases as long as we live; 
for he who desists from what he has 
commenced not only loses his labour, 
but allows himself in a vicious habit.” 
Bad habits are only too easily con- 
tracted, but every time we check a 
tendency to a bad habit we render a 
return of that tendency less likely: it 
is therefore of the utmost importance 
to check the first insidious approaches 
of instability. 
If you find any task you have 
undertaken wearisome persist in it; to 
abandon it directly you feel at all 
fatigued by it is the very worst thing 
you can do. 
It is owing to the instability of 
younger entomologists that so few rise 
to any degree of eminence in their 
favourite Science; they work their way 
very eagerly, and with some amount 
of industry for a short distance, but 
then they get disheartened or lose 
courage, and, abandoning the course 
they were pursuing, they turn their 
energies in some other direction. 
To get on in any pursuit you 
must persevere: the late James Francis 
Stephens commenced his entomological 
career at the age of seventeen, and 
o 
