WCP2293

[1]

Cambridge

17th [no month] [1872?]¹

My dear Sir

I am just beginning to print my Coccinellidai [Coccinellidae]² in the mo Geograph[ic] dist[ribution]. paper[;]³ at the end I shall give a complete list of the Malayan species & their affinities — I have regarded more of them as new than I was at first led to, finding some of the species very close but separable — I hope someday you will be able to bring together all these papers into a sort of Malay Fauna — if only a catalogue[.]

I hope very soon to start for N. Australia opposite Timor — Melville[?] Is[land]. & all about there — where I ought to find the remains of your fauna on Australia proper — is Timor itself worth going to again — N. Guinea I shall try hard to get on to[.] [2]

Your letter ^address I have just read with great interest & much of it specialy [sic] pleases me on nomenclature.⁴ I am very glad to find you a strong upholder of the 10^th edition. With the remarks on the restoration of obsolete names I cordially concur & if I saw the least chance of an agreement would be the first to propose any hard and fast line but seeing as I did & do[,] that each monographer restores a few names according to his fancy[,] I set to to see if it was not possible to revise the whole & restore them all once [and] for ever — & this I fancy could be done by a committee — I don't see that men laying down rules or even deciding them was[,] or would be[,] any good [3] but if decisions were given concerning all the earlier names — since here alone is there any difficulty — agreement would be practically arrived at — What we want is a history of each group generic & specific 1758-1830 & a catalogue based on that — to this everyone would willingly subscribe & controversies before as to names of that date would be practically at an end. I made a contribution of this kind in my "Genera of Coleoptera" in the Society,⁵ also I have the birds in MSS at Newton's⁶ disposal — These are not to be regarded otherwise than as contributions to the history — or materials from which a committee may work out conclusions. & I have studiously avoided any prejudging of the question [4] though I believe that a strict application of priority would in the end soonest arrive at agreement — Do your spiritual works still go on? I have been very much baffled by many things that I have had on hearsay from intimate friends & am appearing up here in the light of a defender — though I claim no title to be a believer — but I object to the absurd way in which it is pooh-poohed out of court amongst us — still as I have no evidence but secondhand it is impossible to do much — & the only man up here M^r. Rippon⁷ — is not [one] whose evidence I could rely on from his extreme enthusiasm for the cause.

Yours very truly | G. R. Crotch [signature]