ANSWERS TO ENIGMAS. 
83 
Answers to Enigmas in the Entomologist’s Companion. 
In the pursuit of scientific truth, intermediate between 
what we do know, and what we do not know, there is always 
a certain extent of debateable ground, where the unknown is 
dimly perceived, or obscurely shadowed forth. That which 
is thus doubtfully visible speedily becomes clear, if the col¬ 
lective attention of observers be called to the subject; but it 
is frequently difficult to do this, because, from the very fact 
of our ignorance, we know not where to record what we 
thus dimly see, yet, as we must place it somewhere, we run 
the risk of putting it in the wrong place. For this reason, in 
my volume of the Insecta Britannica, I abstained from men¬ 
tioning many larvae known to me, because the perfect insects, 
not having been bred, where was I to mention them? In 
the Entomologist’s Companion, however, a work of less 
pretension, I endeavoured to publish every scrap of infor¬ 
mation I possessed; consequently many larvae are there 
recorded of which the perfect insects were then unknown to 
me. These, to a reader of that book, appear as enigmas; 
many of these I can now answer, but some yet remain 
unsolved. The references to the Entomologist’s Companion 
are to the second edition. 
E. C., p. 53. “A larva mining the leaves of the dog¬ 
wood,” is that of Elachista Treitschkiella; see ante, p. 78. 
E. C., p. 59. “A singular polyphagous mining larva, 
perhaps not Lepidopterous,” is Coleopterous, being 
that of Bamphus pulicarius. 
E. C., p. 63. “A larva making brown blotches in the 
leaves of honeysuckle, in July,” produced Perittia obscure- 
V^nctella; see ante, p. 77. 
E. C., p. 65. “A larva found last November, in grass, 
near Beckenham, which mined the grass, not like an Ela - 
