65 
of anj^ one student ever grasping the details of the whole subject so 
evident, that entomologists have long since given place to dipterists, 
coleopterists, etc. But, even though a man may become a proficient 
systematic dipterist or lepidopterist if he have leisure and ability, yet, 
as a rule, the study of an entire Order, if the study is to be really worthy 
of the name and to be something more than the mere naming of speci¬ 
mens, is soon recognised as impossible. Accordingly, we frequently find 
men who restrict their attention to one small family of the larger 
Orders, and all their energies are needed to deal with even this small 
part of the subject. 
Almost every scientific entomologist, however renowned he may 
afterwards become, began his career as a collector either of butterflies 
and moths, or of beetles. Darwin was a keen collector of British Co- 
leoptera, as a lad; McLachlan, the great authority on dragonflies, 
revelled in butterflies and moths, and I believe that the Lepidoptera 
were Sir John Lubbock’s first love. It is from collectors of this kind 
that our scientific naturalists are made—men who understand the living 
creatures they study, and who are not misled so easily as are those to whom 
the dried bodies alone are of interest. It must be borne in mind, that 
on the younger generation of naturalists—lads now actively pursuing 
Bed Admirals and Clouded Yellows—will devolve the carrying on of 
the work which we of the present generation are now doing our best to 
further and to consolidate. It is the duty of our Societies and of their 
individual members to foster a love of natural objects, and to direct it, 
if possible, into channels where it will bring forth good fruit. 
It has long been a popular opinion that an entomologist is a person 
who collects insects, rather than one who studies them. That this concep¬ 
tion is based, even now, not so much on prejudice as on real observation 
of the waj^s and customs of so-called entomologists, is only too sadly 
evident. How many of our lepidopterists know anything of the ana¬ 
tomy of insects ? How many know anything of the wonderful organs 
by which the small insect, which they ruthlessly pinch and thrust out 
of the net because it is not sufficiently fine for the cabinet, sees, tastes, 
smells and probably hears ; or of the way in which the honied drops, 
distilled in Flora’s dainty recesses, are converted into the blood, muscles 
and other parts of insect structure ; or, how the crawling caterpillar 
becomes metamorphosed into the charming fly, beetle or moth, which 
so interests us ? 
The collector of insects in times gone by appears to have supposed 
that the science of entomology consisted in systematic arrangement; 
but since that time a vast field has been opened up to thoughtful 
entomologists, a field unknown and unthought of by the old school 
of collectors and collection-makers. The systematising stage in the 
evolution of our science was, however, a very necessary one, for until 
we have approximately correct and complete lists of the insects of 
different countries, their comparison is impossible. Only when this 
work had been done, could the more philosophical side of the study be 
taken up with any advantage. Collections of insects are, indeed, the 
storehouses of the facts on which philosophical naturalists can build up 
theories, make deductions, and speculate with some remote possibility 
of certainty on the dim vistas of the past which rise up spectral-like 
to haunt and yet to fascinate the enquiring mind. 
i 
