THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S 
WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER. 
No. 119.] SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 1859. [Price Id. 
TOO OLD! 
“ We are never too old to learn,” 
says the proverb, but, in point of fact, 
we do find it otherwise. The man of 
forty is too old to learn many things ; 
those who have passed that age will 
have read the letter that appeared in 
our columns last week, from the pen 
of Dr. Staudinger, with a feeling of 
vain regret; had such an appeal been 
made to them twenty years ago, when 
they were young and active, but now, 
alas! it is too late; they feel they are 
too old ! 
To admit that the better part of 
life has been devoted to a movement 
which must now be reversed, — you 
might as well ask the proprietor of a 
canal to assist in the promotion of a 
railway; yet the railway has been 
made, and the canal proprietor has 
even profited by it. 
Few can realise to themselves the 
extreme seclusion in which the ento- 
mologists of this country lived twenty 
or thirty years ago ; except a few of 
the leaders, literally no one knew any- 
thing ; the reader of Stephens swore 
by Stephens, — the reader of Curtis 
swore by Curtis; but if these two 
readers of different authors met, neither 
could understand the language of the 
other. We are not exaggerating, — we 
are speaking the simple truth, and 
we speak from experience. Of course 
where students only of British authors 
were unintelligible to one another, it 
was hopeless to expect that an English- 
man would be able to understand, or 
would be intelligible to, a French ento- 
mologist. No such luck. 
Years passed on : in due time a 
zealous English entomologist visited 
Paris and explored the collections 
there, discovered that species known 
by one name here were called by 
another name in Paris, and was thence 
led to investigate, with the view of 
ascertaining whether the name em- 
ployed in Paris or that used in Lon- 
don was the correct one. The result 
was, in a few years, such an uprooting 
of our oldest and most cherished asso- 
ciations as made even bold reformers 
stand aghast. Henry Doubleday fal- 
tered not ; he proceeded with his task, 
and if at the present day there is 
not that ch:ism that formerly existed 
between the nomenelature of British 
collectors and that of Continental 
Q 
