THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S 
WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER. 
No. 954.] SATUEDAY, AUGUST 17, 1861. [Price Id. 
BIBLIOGEAPHY. 
The bibliography of Entomology is so 
vast a field it is something fearful. 
Descriptions and observations are scat- 
tered here and there in scientific Trans- 
actions, and in periodicals published in 
capitals and in provincial towns; in 
England, Scotland, Ireland, France, 
Spain, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, 
Eussia, Italy; nay, not only in Europe 
but in Asia, in Africa, in America, and 
even in Australia. 
And then, when all is explored and 
all collected, what a mass of rubbish! 
Descriptions which the describers would 
indeed be puzzled to decypher, and 
observations so defective, so false, that 
one is amazed at the writer’s inventive 
faculty in narrating so circumstantially 
things that he never could have seen. 
Truly the writer who looks back on his 
own publications of a few years ago 
feels impelled to exclaim, “ What a 
fool I was ! How could I be so 
stupid?” and then the question will 
arise uneasily in the mind whether he 
is yet free from folly and stupidity. 
If the descriptions and observations 
more than ten years old could be anni- 
hilated the matter would not appear 
so serious, but it is a fearful considera- 
tion when, in the decline of life, we 
find all the evil, as well as all the 
good, that we have ever done, raked 
together and recorded against us. We 
would willingly have the evil omitted 
and only the good preserved; but your 
thorough-working bibliographer does not 
so; he pursues the even tenour of hisr 
way, callous to all human feelings, in/- 
tent solely on chronicling systematical'ly 
that which exists. 
We have been led into these re ni ■ arks 
by the presence amongst us, at (this 
period, of one who is engaged on Whe 
4 
most thorough and complete work on.^^ 
the bibliography of Entomology that 
has ever been attempted — a work which 
will shortly be in the printer’s hands, 
and will be published as soon as pos- 
sible by Engelmann, of Leipzig. There 
is no doubt that such a work will 
prove a great boon to workers in Ento- 
mology, and by facilitating references 
to scattered notices in periodicals and 
in the various Transactions of learned 
Societies, will be of inestimable value. 
At the present day the number of 
X 
