THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S 
WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER. 
No. 99.] 
LETHARGY. 
It is difficult sometimes to account for 
that extraordinary degree of lethargy 
which creeps slowly — but, alas! too 
surely — upon many w'ho were once re- 
nowned for their energy and activity. 
Of course our own day of torpor 
must some day be expected ; but, in 
the meanwhile, we feel wonderfully dis- 
posed to show that we are alive and 
kicking, by pinching all our neighbours, 
just with the friendly view of rousing 
them to some display of activity. 
“ Most extraordinary boy that of 
yours: he’s just run a sharp instru- 
ment into my leg.” 
Yet the unfortunate fat boy was 
quite innocently disposed ; he merely 
wanted to “ attract Mr. Pickwick’s at- 
tention.” 
A letter from a correspondent, in 
another column, “ attracts attention ” 
to a fact, that very few of the “ big- 
wigs” publish their information through 
the medium of our pages, and that 
thus the doings of schoolboys are im- 
mortalized, whilst those of Professors 
are ignored. Our correspondent has 
apparently, however, failed to remark 
[Price Id. 
that to incipients (and amongst our 
readers we must ordinarily reckon to 
have 50 per cent, in the incipient 
stage) the doings of incipients will 
always be more interesting than the 
doings of those more advanced. Still 
we admit it is an evil that a capture 
of general importance, if made by an 
old hand, is far less likely to be com- 
municated to us than if made by a 
juvenile. The advanced entomologist 
has made the capture, and does not 
care to publish to all the world that 
he took so good a thing at sugar in 
his own garden ; in the first place, he 
might be bothered by a series of letters 
from the Barnes family, trying to coax 
his capture out of him ; in the second 
place, he might draw a number of 
amateurs, collectors, dealers, & c., into 
the lane at the end of his garden, 
each one going in hopes of getting 
the same prize, and thus his privacy 
would be disturbed and his comfortable 
seclusion impaired. 
Hence, we believe, entomologists 
above a certain grade will generally 
be found amongst the non-writers, or 
they will write only to find fault with 
something some one else has written, 
quite forgetting Dr. Livingstone’s re- 
SATURDAY, JULY 3, 1858. 
p 
