18 
Psyche 
[March 
entomology suffers more severely than the more recently 
developed branches since its literature has grown to be far 
more extensive and the details with which it deals are not 
only more varied but more complex as, they do not appear 
to be reducible to simplified expression or generalization. 
Can we say that we are honestly giving these problems the 
attention they require in the training of taxonomists? 
The contributions of genetics are providing a great 
amount of material which is of broad importance to 
systematic entomology and this is gradually being utilized 
by taxonomists to broaden their ideas concerning specific 
relationships, veriability, polymorphism, etc. Genetics some- 
times complains that taxonomy should make wider use of 
its methods and discoveries. We can only reply that we hope 
to do so more fully in the future after we have again cor- 
ralled all the insects that Noah let loose on Mount Ararat, 
together with any new species, hybrids and mutations that 
may have come into being since that time. Certainly the 
discoveries of genetics have already greatly modified the 
taxonomic treatment of species and intraspecific forms, but 
so far it has been impossible to utilize them to modify the 
current methods of comparative morphology in dealing with 
larger groups. 
One present trend of systematic entomology is difficult 
to see in a clear light. Physiology, together with its child 
ecology, which is really a nursery of young children not yet 
quite capable of socializing their behavior, is a department 
of biology whose methods and outlook are rapidly changing. 
So far the contacts of physiology and ecology with taxo- 
nomic entomologists have been few and mainly confined to 
the utilization of the taxonomic laboratory as a workshop 
where trained mechanics could repair and get into under- 
standable form certain lists of names representing the mate- 
rials investigated by biologists to whom taxonomy and 
nomenclature is a totally unknown, thickly populated, but 
nevertheless utterly barren field. Fortunately, through the 
intervention of ecology it appears that physiology and taxo- 
nomy have come to regard each other with greater respect 
and there are indications that taxonomy may in the future 
greatly profit by the investigations of her co-workers in 
physiology, who in turn would not suffer any great degrada- 
tion from a slight knowledge of systematics. 
