THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S 
WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER. 
No. 228.] SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1861 [Price Id. 
EGGS. 
Mr. Logan, in the recent number of 
the ‘ Zoologist,’ p. 7357, remarks, “ Why 
the eggs of the Lepidoptera should be 
so entirely ignoved as they are, by all 
modern entomologists, is difficult to 
explain, since they afford, in many 
instances, most excellent characters of 
genera, and also of the larger divisions, 
and had we sufficient data a system 
might be built thereon, which might 
prove quite as good as that based 
upon the larvae, and in many cases 
would no doubt prove corroborative 
of it.” 
We trust Mr. Logan will follow up 
this pertinent enquiry by contributing 
to the ‘Transactions’ of the Entomo- 
logical Society a paper on the eggs 
of Lepidoptera ; such a paper, we 
conceive, would be most gladly wel- 
comed. 
We quote from Agassiz on Classi- 
'fication the following passage corrobo- 
rative of the force of Mr. Logan’s 
remarks : — 
“ Embryology furnishes also the best 
measure of the true affinities existing 
between animals. I do not mean to 
say that the affinities of animals can 
only be ascertained by embryonic in- 
vestigations; the history of Zoology 
shows, on the contrary, that even 
before the study of the formation and 
growth of animals had become a dis- 
tinct branch of Physiology, the gene- 
ral relationship of most animals had 
already been determined, with a re- 
markable degree of accuracy, by ana- 
tomical investigations. It is neverthe- 
less true that, in some remarkable 
instances, the knowledge of the em- 
bryonic changes of certain animals 
gave the first clue to their true 
affinities, while in other cases it has 
furnished a very welcome confirmation 
of relationships, which, before, might 
have appeared probable, but were still 
very problematical.” 
Agassiz then proceeds to cite in- 
stances in which the discovery of em- 
bryological forms led to a correction 
of the previously existing classification. 
Thus “Cuvier considered the barnacles 
as a distinct class, which he placed 
among Mollusks, under the name of 
Cirripeds, and it was not until Thomp- 
son had shown, what was soon con- 
X 
