Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/304

290 Two other examples are Othnius and Eupleurida, United States genera, which are respectively equivalent to Elacatis and Ischalia, found in Borneo. Our native genera Eurygenius and Toposcopus are represented by scarcely different forms in Australia. All these belong to the second series (Heteromera), and the number of examples might be greatly increased with less labor on my part than patience on yours.

A single example from the Rhynchophora, and I will pass to another subject.

On the sea-coast of California, extending to Alaska, is a very anomalous insect, whose affinities are difficult to discern, called Emphyastes fucicola, from its occurrence under the sea-weed cast up by the waves. It is represented in Australia by several species of a nearly allied genus, Aphela, found in similar situations.

In all entomological investigations relating to geographical distribution, we are greatly embarrassed by the multitude of species, and by the vague and opinionative genera founded upon characters of small importance. The Coleoptera alone, thus far described, amount to over 60,000 so-called species, and there are from 80,000 to 100,000 in collections. Under these circumstances it is quite impossible for one person to command either the time or the material to master the whole subject, and, from the laudable zeal of collectors to make known what they suppose to be new objects, an immense amount of synonymy must result. Thus in the great "Catalogus Coleopterorum" of Gemminger and Harold, a permanent record of the untiring industry of those two excellent entomologists, species of the genus Trechicus, founded by me upon a small North American insect, are mentioned under live generic names, only one of which, is recognized as a synonym of another. These generic headings appear in such remote paged of the volume as 135, 146, and 289.

The two closely-allied genera of Rhynchophora mentioned above are separated by no less than 168 pages.

It is therefore plain that, before much progress can be made in the line of research which I have proposed to you, whereby we may recover important fragments of the past history of the earth, entomology must be studied in a somewhat different manner from that now adopted. The necessity is every day more apparent that descriptions of heterogeneous material are rather obstructive than beneficial to science, except in the case of extraordinary forms likely to give information concerning geographical distribution or classification. Large typical collections affording abundant material for comparison, for the approximation of allied forms, and the elimination of doubtful ones, must be accumulated, and, in the case of such perishable objects as those we are now dealing with, must be placed where they can have the protecting influences both of climate and personal care.