5 l6 
Things versus Words. 
[September, 
III. THINGS VERSUS WORDS. 
By Frank Fernseed. 
t 6 " N the spring-time of the present year I was wending my 
way along a field-path in one ot the Midland Counties 
—the exadt date and place being quite irrelevant. 
From a bush there suddenly rose up a “ brimstone buttei- 
fly ( Gonopteryx rhamni), a survival of last season, and 
skimmed along over the top of a hedge until it was lost to 
sight. A little further appeared a “ small tortoise-shell, 
old and shabby, but disporting itself after the fashion of its 
kind. The thought at once came home to me,— how different 
are the respective flights of these two species, and how 
readily an experienced entomologist can distinguish them 
by this attribute alone, even if too remote to note their cha- 
racteristic forms and colours ! 
Here, however, the courteous reader will look round, fully 
prepared to inflidt upon me, in spirit at least, the tiaditional 
pinch which in my school-boy days was duly awarded to the 
bringer of old news. Said courteous reader is in one respeCt 
right. The faCt is not novel. It has been already pointed 
out in a much more complete and general mannei. There 
are veteran Lepidopterists who can identify by its flight, if 
not every British species of butterfly and moth, yet at least 
every group. But not one of these specialists— and here 
we come to the point— can describe the flight of each form 
in such language that a non-specialist would be able to 
identify the inseCt by the description of its flight. I may 
even go a step further : the specialist, however complete 
and accurate his knowledge of the flight of an inseCt, will 
not have this knowledge in all its details stoied up in his 
own mind in the form of words. 
It must not be for a moment supposed that the peculiar 
movements of inseCts, or of any other animals, aie the only 
properties of things which cannot be described accuiately 
in words. We can, by means of language, put on record 
with precision the words which have been used by other 
persons, or our own thoughts and emotions ; but when we 
comeMo things we can gi\e account of them only to a very 
limited extent. We can state their number, their weight, 
their dimension, and their forms, in as far as the lattei can 
be reduced to simple geometrical elements, and everyone 
