THE WEEKLY ENTOMOLOGIST. 
271 
son — salmon, for instance, and mem- 
bers of Parliament — we cannot won- 
der that Lists of Captures follow the 
prevailing fashion, together with 
Observations, &c. Nevertheless we 
have begun a good custom of “ blow- 
ing up” our subscribers every month 
or five weeks, in a friendly manner; 
and we should be sorry to depart 
from our rule, without sufficient rea- 
son. We regret to say that we have 
no reason for witholding this period- 
ical dose of abuse, and we are obliged 
to ask our readers again to set their 
pens to work for us. 
“ I fear much” says a valued cor- 
respondent “ that Entomology is 
very much on the decline in Eng- 
land.” We quite agree with this 
opinion; but there is still balm in 
1 Gilead ; there are too many energetic 
workers to let the study die. 
The worst of it is that many of 
our best supporters, many of those 
w r ho really wish well to every Ento- 
■ mological publication, are the last to 
prepare anything for the printer; It 
certainly is from no w r ant of ability to 
write that they are silent; but from 
a stubborn and pupa-like lethargy. 
Another class of Entomologists 
have a tantalizing way of promising 
communications for the future. One 
of these says “ at my earliest oppor- 
tunity, I will forward a list of Lqri- 
doptera, taken in the woods near this 
neighbourhood”; a second kindly 
suggests that the winter will be a 
fitter time for sending his notes. 
Now, we can quite understand that 
evo-ry Entomologist is not so fully 
aware of the difficulty of filling a 
weekly paper as the Editors them- 
' selves. Nevertheless, we would sug- 
gest that each contributor send as 
much as possible in the way of Ob- 
servations, at once; and let to-morrow 
take care of itself. 
We have prepared a list of our 
subscribers as far as we know their 
names ; and we ask each one of them 
to consider this article as a personal 
appeal for some few of the valuable 
notes that every working Entomo- 
logist is well able to furnish. We 
purpose ticking off such of our 
correspondents as respond to our 
request, and testing the statistics. 
We hope to see the postman 
heavily burdened during the next few 
weeks. From large towns, particu- 
larly where we know that the “ En- 
tomologist ” has a good sale — such, 
for instance, as York — we shall look 
for considerable results. 
