THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S 
WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER. 
No. 10.] SATURDAY, JULY 19, 1858. [Pkice 1 d. 
THE INFORMATION POSSESSED BY 
INDIVIDUALS NOT ALWAYS THE 
KNOWLEDGE OF THE COMMUNITY. 
In a paper recently read before the En- 
tomological Society of London, the fol- 
lowing sentence occurred. 
“ When a general work on a group of 
insects has appeared each entomologist 
seeks there for the name of any species 
he may chance to meet with, and if he 
happens to find it there well and good, 
hut if not he probably describes it in 
some scientific journal or the 1 Trans- 
actions’ of some learned society, but were 
the general work non-existent he would 
feel utterly disheartened at the apparent 
impossibility of naming his capture ; 
there would be no pleasure in catching a 
new species, and the science would stand 
still.” 
To this it was objected that the pro- 
gress of science was not necessarily de- 
pendent upon systematic works; but is 
there not some equivoque ; what is meant 
by science and its progress P Science 
progresses when one generation of men 
knows more of any given branch of 
knowledge than the preceding genera- 
tion : science is stationary when the one 
generation knows no more than its pre- 
decessor: science is retrograding where 
the new generation knows less than that 
which preceded it. All branches of 
science have fits of movement, are some- 
times stationary and sometimes retro- 
grade. An Owen may push forward 
science to an advanced outpost; but if he 
does not systematise his knowledge for 
those coming after him, the outwork not 
being sufficiently supported, is liable to be 
lost, it lapses to tbe mass of incognita , 
and is, perhaps, not reattained for cen- 
turies. 
The knowledge attained by an indi- 
vidual, unless rendered available to 
others, may be no gain to science: at 
his death all his thoughts perish, and all 
his knowledge is lost for ever. Who 
can calculate the loss sustained by the 
death of Edward Forbes? simply, in his 
case, by the loss of undeveloped, half- 
formed ideas ; but suppose, and such in- 
stances do occur, he had amassed stores 
of information which he was carefully 
treasuring up to form, at some distant 
day, a valuable scientific work, and sup- 
pose that every scrap of knowledge he 
was thus collecting were carefully kept 
to himself, not to be made known to 
others till the due period had arrived, is 
it not evident that the knowledge he thus 
obtained might be no real gain to 
science, for it might all be lost again ? 
An individual may have a fund of in- 
formation, and without meaning to be 
selfish may, from supineness, indifference, 
love of ease, or the dolce far niente, 
allow his information to be useless to 
others. 
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