The Moth

Probably you have heard of Hapley--not W. T. Hapley, the son, but the
celebrated Hapley, the Hapley of _Periplaneta Hapliia_, Hapley the
entomologist.

If so you know at least of the great feud between Hapley and Professor
Pawkins, though certain of its consequences may be new to you. For those
who have not, a word or two of explanation is necessary, which the idle
reader may go over with a glancing eye, if his indolence so incline him.

It is amazing how very widely diffused is the ignorance of such really
important matters as this Hapley-Pawkins feud. Those epoch-making
controversies, again, that have convulsed the Geological Society are, I
verily believe, almost entirely unknown outside the fellowship of that
body. I have heard men of fair general education even refer to the great
scenes at these meetings as vestry-meeting squabbles. Yet the great hate
of the English and Scotch geologists has lasted now half a century, and
has "left deep and abundant marks upon the body of the science." And this
Hapley-Pawkins business, though perhaps a more personal affair, stirred
passions as profound, if not profounder. Your common man has no conception
of the zeal that animates a scientific investigator, the fury of
contradiction you can arouse in him. It is the _odium theologicum_ in
a new form. There are men, for instance, who would gladly burn Professor
Ray Lankester at Smithfield for his treatment of the Mollusca in the
Encyclopaedia. That fantastic extension of the Cephalopods to cover the
Pteropods ... But I wander from Hapley and Pawkins.

It began years and years ago, with a revision of the Microlepidoptera
(whatever these may be) by Pawkins, in which he extinguished a new species
created by Hapley. Hapley, who was always quarrelsome, replied by a
stinging impeachment of the entire classification of Pawkins.[A] Pawkins
in his "Rejoinder"[B] suggested that Hapley's microscope was as defective
as his power of observation, and called him an "irresponsible meddler"--
Hapley was not a professor at that time. Hapley in his retort,[C] spoke of
"blundering collectors," and described, as if inadvertently, Pawkins'
revision as a "miracle of ineptitude." It was war to the knife. However,
it would scarcely interest the reader to detail how these two great men
quarrelled, and how the split between them widened until from the
Microlepidoptera they were at war upon every open question in entomology.
There were memorable occasions. At times the Royal Entomological Society
meetings resembled nothing so much as the Chamber of Deputies. On the
whole, I fancy Pawkins was nearer the truth than Hapley. But Hapley was
skilful with his rhetoric, had a turn for ridicule rare in a