Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/336

310 passage from Mr. Wallace's 'Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection':—"Distastefulness alone would, however, be of little service to caterpillars, because their soft and juicy bodies are so delicate that if seized and afterwards rejected by a bird they would almost certainly be killed. Some constant and easily perceived signal was therefore necessary to serve as a warning to birds never to touch these uneatable kinds, and a very gaudy and conspicuous colouring, with the habit of fully exposing themselves to view, becomes such a signal, being in strong contrast with the green or brown tints and retiring habits of the eatable kinds." (See also Proc. Ent. Soc, March 4, 1867.)

During the meeting the Rev. A. Eaton stated that he had observed a male specimen of Colias Edusa in Dorset on June 3rd. Mr. S. Stevens had likewise seen six specimens near Gravesend on June 4th.—, Hon. Sec.

 

it is for specialist workers in Natural History to have their attention every now and then diverted from their particular object of study, not merely to the investigations of their brethren in kindred branches, but directed to the results at which generalizers are arriving. In this way the first are led by successive steps to wider and wider notions, so as gradually to realize the conception that there are other nuts in the world beside the narrow cell in which each, maggot-like, has been existing; and this discovery cannot fail to make the specialist's labour more useful by showing him how he can turn his efforts so as best to aid the systematist.

Mr. Pascoe then, in this little book, has set an excellent example, and it is one that requires a certain amount of courage to set. So divided and subdivided have become the multitudinous branches of Zoology, and to such an extent has the special knowledge of some of them been pushed, that in these days it is quite certain that nobody can draw up a general Classification which shall pretend to enter into any detail without almost all specialists, on taking it up, 