Page:Madras journal of literature and science vol 1 new series 1856-57.djvu/72

60 to do so, for although he labors under distressing disadvantages in some respects, he happily enjoys a proportionate share of advantages in others. It is unsatisfactory in the extreme for an enthusiastic entomologist to be obliged to let his collections go out of his own hands, see others reap the honors from them which are to be reaped on such occasions, or perhaps see as it were a gulf close over them, hear no more of them, and find himself forgotten. For what is a mere collector? Let him display as much industry as possible, he is hardly looked upon as an entomologist, certainly as long as he is prevented from publishing anything, not as a scientific one. Now, if such a man merely delists from publishing the fruits of his researches, from want of resources to assist him to go creditably through such a task; if he suffers his collections to go out of his hands because he is too true a lover of science not to see the credit in a great measure due to himself reaped by another rather than to hoard up his entomological treasures—a useless heap eventually to be destroyed by moths and time—I say, that a man who acts upon principles like these, finds himself not seldom disheartened in the prosecution of his studies, under difficulties such as I have set forth. If however, as I have endeavoured to point out, these difficulties can be overcome to a very considerable extent, is anything more natural than that he should be the herald of his own discoveries? Could anything be more unkind and ungenerous on the part of his scientific brethren at home than to oppose and discourage him by their disapprobation? I might enlarge on this subject, which has been a sore one with me for a long time, but I think this is sufficient to direct the reader into the train of my ideas and to enable him to follow it up.

I hasten therefore to conclude. As mentioned above, the tropical entomologist has a proportionate share of advantages to balance what falls to his lot of the contrary. One of the advantages which he enjoys over his brethren at home is, that he has an opportunity of seeing and studying alive what can at home only be examined in a state differing more or less from that of life. Therefore, if he is enabled and expected to describe new species, it is moreover highly desirable for the sake of the promulgation of sound information that he should do so, that he should avail himself of this, his principal