2io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



So we must at the outset classify our students and determine what 

 is really meant by an entomologist : 



First of all, we have those individuals who devote their energies 

 to the study of adult specimens only; describing species and genera, 

 revising and monographing groups and, in short, devoting themselves 

 altogether to systematic work. This is essential work, for until 

 species are made known and tagged there is nothing to speak or write 

 about and, no matter how interesting their structure or habits, the 

 information is absolutely useless or unavailable to others, until it can 

 be applied by some definite term to some definite concept. 



The systematist then, no matter how little he may know of the 

 insects outside of the dry specimens with which he works, is entitled 

 to be called an entomologist and to have his good deeds recorded here. 



Then we have, secondly, those students to whom the systematic 

 position of an insect is a matter of little account; but who are inter- 

 ested in its life history, in its development, in its relation to its sur- 

 roundings and more or less, perhaps, in its economic importance to 

 man or to some set of men. Without question, these students also are 

 eminently entitled to be considered as entomologists and there is no 

 body of men whose work is of greater importance to the community 

 than those falling under this heading. 



In a third category come those who see in the specimen before 

 them a combination of structures of greater or less interest or impor- 

 tance; who care little or nothing for its life history or economic im- 

 portance, and nothing at all for its systematic position. They need 

 the name of the species only to designate the particular organism that 

 was studied. The work of these students is of the highest possible 

 importance; but they are not entomologists, though their studies may 

 be confined to insect structures. They are anatomists or histologists, 

 depending upon whether they study it grossly, with dissecting needles 

 and low power lenses, or whether they first slice it into sections and 

 then use the high power microscope to look through them. It goes 

 without saying that any member of the first and second division may 

 be a member of the third as well, and I would not be understood as 

 in any way belittling the importance of the work done by these men. 



A fourth class is interested in certain species of insects only because 

 of their relation to some other animal or to man, and only in so far as 

 that relation exists. Such are they who study mosquitoes only as 

 intermediate hosts of diseases of man, or bot flies only as parasites of 

 animals. The work done by these students is of intense scientific and 

 practical interest and of the utmost importance to the community, but 

 tliey are not entomologists, although some of those carrying on this 

 kind of work are entitled to rank as such because of other work done. 



And now, what about him who falls under none of my classifica- 



