76 
DR. HERMANN AUGUST HAGEN 
I found the female Merope tuber in the summer of 1856, one evening, by lamp¬ 
light on the wall of the veranda of the hotel in Berkeley Springs, Ya. A little 
later I obtained the male (unknown before) in the collection of the Museum of the 
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Professor Leidy was showing me a 
box of promiscuous unnamed insects, among which I noticed the specimen. Hav¬ 
ing called his attention to this remarkable form he authorized me to add it 
to the collection of Neuroptera which I was preparing to send to Dr. Hagen. 
(These facts are not mentioned in Hagen’s “Synopsis.”) Merope tuber seems to 
be a very rare insect. Upon my request, Mr. William Beutenmiiller of New 
York sent me (April, 1901) the following information about its occurrence since 
my time: “ In a paper by James S. Hine, entitled ‘ A Review of the Panor- 
pidae of America North of Mexico,’ 1 Merope tuber is recorded from Maine, Penn¬ 
sylvania, New York, and District of Columbia. He states that he has seen two 
males and three females.” 
Such was the result for my friend Hagen of the first three 
years of my residence in the United States. 
In 1867 Prof. Louis Agassiz decided to appoint Dr. Hagen Cus¬ 
todian of the entomological collection which he was forming in the 
Museum at Cambridge, Mass., a post which Hagen occupied until 
his death in 1893. As I had had some influence upon Professor 
Agassiz’s choice, he wrote me, while I was in Europe, in May, 1873: 
“ Plus nous avanyons et plus je m’estime heureux d’avoir d6cou- 
vert le Dr. Hagen, et d’avoir rflussi a l’attacher au Mus6e. Par 
ses soins, notre collection entomologique prend tous les jours plus 
de consistance, a mesure qu’elle s'arrange et se developpe,” etc. 
Hagen, like Loew, was a Hercules of working power, but a Her¬ 
cules whose only ambition was to be useful, and to fulfil conscien¬ 
tiously what he considered as his duty. I often thought that, in 
some cases, he carried this sense of self-sacrifice too far, and that he 
sometimes, like the mythological Hercules, good-naturedly under¬ 
took to sweep some entomological Augean stable, which he might 
have left to be cleansed by some other person whose time was less 
valuable than his. A monument of his learning, conscientiousness, 
and marvellous endurance is his “ Bibliotheca Entomologica,” in 
two volumes (1862-1863). In a letter which Loew wrote me at 
that time (June, 1861) I find this characteristic passage: “When 
I see Hagen trudging along with his fifty pounds of manuscript, 
from town to town, and from library to library, I think to myself, 
this is not the kind of work I ivould have undertaken .” 
1 “ Univ. Bull. Ohio State University,” Series V, No. 7. 
