THE SUBSTITUTE; 
Or, Entomological Exchange Facilitator, and 
Entomologist’s Fire-side Companion. 
No. 4.] SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1856. [Piuce 2rf, 
FOEEIGN INSECTS. 
As a rule foreign insects must be 
bought ; and this fact alone is 
sufficient to limit the number of 
their possessors ; but when the 
time, space and expense, requisite 
for their preservation, are also 
considered, it is evident that the 
persons in this money-getting 
country, who will attend to exotic 
Entomology, must always be few. 
But the advantage to Science 
from the possession of a collection 
of foreign insects is so great, that 
we cannot hut he desirous that 
: those who have the power should 
; make one — not of all Orders, for 
that would he a hopele.ss task — 
' hut each person of some one Order, 
or even a Family. There are 
I hundreds of wealthy men that if 
I they only had a taste for Natural 
i History might find in exotic En- 
ttomologyan employment for their 
leisure of much service to thera- 
< selves and Science. It seems lhat_ 
.only individuals and nations can 
^succeed in forming and keeping 
large collections of insects, for 
societies to which such a collection 
was deemed to he a necessary ob- 
ject have failed in their endea- 
vours to keep it together. The 
Entomological Society of France, 
and the Zoological and Entomo- 
logical Societies in England, are 
examples of the truth of the adage, 
“ that what is everybody’s busi- 
ness is nobody’s business.” The 
advantage of a collection of 
foreign insects is not merely the 
knowledge that so many of them 
in such variety of form, structure 
and colour, exist, but that w'e 
have in them, so far as such things 
can avail, the materials for study- 
ing the system that Nature has 
adopted in the creation of organ- 
ised beings. We say as far as 
such things can avail ; for he who 
has before him only the dead dry 
forms of insects, of whose manners 
and habits he knows nothing, is 
in the position of one who views a 
show of figures without knowing 
what springs govern their move- 
ments, or indeed any more than 
the names of the actors. Still 
such knowledge, cut and dry as it 
is, is not to be despised ; from time 
to time it may he vivified by the 
discoveries of observers of the 
E 
