156 
THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER. 
the principle on which it shall be carried 
out to be as follows : — That each shall 
announce in the ‘ Intelligencer,’ at the 
time of their appearance, the names of 
such species, so that on application he 
shall capture (if possible) and forward a 
pair alive, the applicant paying postage 
both ways, unless he can return another 
species a desiderata of the sender; and 
that each shall, to the full extent of his 
power, assist one another. Any one 
wishing to join the above will please 
write to Mr. Stainton, so as to have his 
name inserted as soon as possible, and 
by so doing he shall be considered 
pledged to fulfil the above rules. The 
reasons why I wish to have them sent 
alive are these: many of the dragonflies 
are of large size ; a pair of such, if sent 
by post, would cost at least 8 d. or Is. 
pc stage one way, and are very liable to 
be injured by transit. If sent alive, a 
pair or more might be put into a round 
tin box of 1^-inch diameter and inches 
long, the cost of which would be Id. or 
2d. and postage 2d. The trouble of 
cleaning out the inside of the abdomen, 
&c., would take up a great deal of time, 
if we had many applications for a spe- 
cies : again, it appears that the genital 
organs form one of the distinguishing 
characters, consequently are more easily 
examined when alive ; also the colours of 
many fade, even light stripes or dark 
parts of the thorax disappear unless 
coloured, so it is the better plan to 
send them alive. The plans I have 
adopted in setting are as follows: — 
Detach the abdomen close to the thorax, 
then gently squeeze out the intestines, 
take a little bit of cotton wool on the end 
of a fine wire (say a steel knitting-needle 
flattened at one end and notched), and 
insert it to the very end of the abdomen, 
gently moving it round, so as to remove 
every particle of dirt or moisture, then 
stuff it carefully with cotton wool: now 
clean and stuff the thorax in the same 
manner; take some thick gum mucilage 
and stick on the abdomen again, and, as 
all blue, light green or red disappear in 
a short time, paint the markings care- 
fully with oil or water body-colour, and, 
if carefully done, when you look at them 
you will not consider your labour has 
been in vain. — I bid. 
THE GEADUS. 
TO THE EDITOR OF THE ‘INTELLI- 
GENCER.’ 
Sir, — Whatever is published on this 
subject must obviously be made acces- 
sible to all classes, or it will be compara- 
tively useless: it is chiefly to the un- 
educated that such a guide will be useful. 
I much doubt whether such a Gradus as 
is proposed to be undertaken by Oxford 
and Cambridge scholars could be pro- 
duced at a sufficiently low cost. 
Several of your correspondents seem 
willing to contribute their learning to- 
wards the formation of such a guide. 
Would it not be possible to make the 
‘Intelligencer’ useful in this matter? 
A column or half a column per week (the 
quantities might perhaps be determined 
by “ Sigma” and “ Gamma”) devoted to 
this purpose would carry the proposed 
information to hundreds of firesides, 
where a more costly Gradus would never 
be able to penetrate. 
There is, however, one view of the 
case that does not seem to have oc- 
curred to any of your correspondents. 
Are we to remain as exclusively 
English in our pronunciation as we 
were at one time in our classification, 
or would it be well, now we are trying 
to write an entomological language 
intelligible to our European neigh- 
bours, to endeavour to speak that lan- 
guage also intelligibly to them ? I am 
reminded of this by recollecting how 
much I was at first puzzled by the pro- 
