INSECTS AND ENTOMOLOGISTS 467 



INSECTS AND ENTOMOLOGISTS, THEIR RELATION TO 

 THE COMMUNITY AT LARGE. II 



Br Professor J. B. SMITH 



RDTGERS COLLEGE, NEW BRUNSWICK, N. J. 



AND now, having given a very hasty and superficial statement to 

 show how important a place the insect really occupies in the 

 social economy, it behooves me to say something of some of the men 

 whose labors made some of these facts and conclusions known. 



Many of the matters of which I have spoken are of recent develop- 

 ment and the men who have done the work are still with us and still 

 working. Some are in attendance at this very meeting and as we ex- 

 pect still better work from them, nothing will be said of what they 

 have done thus far. And while it is intended to confine the men- 

 tion to American entomologists, it is necessary to include under that 

 head some whose claim to be called American rests altogether upon the 

 work done with or on American insects. Let me say too that the order 

 in which the names come is not meant to represent anything more than 

 convenience in arrangement of topics, and finally, it is not to be under- 

 stood that omissions show lack of regard, but only that within my time 

 limit no photographs were obtainable. 



Thomas Say has been termed the father of American entomology, 

 and certainly no one is better deserving of that term than he. He 

 builded well and broadly and his knowledge of the American insect 

 fauna was surprising. His work was in all orders and the amount of 

 material that passed through his hands was very large. Unfortunately 

 most of his types have been destroyed, so that we are not now able to 

 see the specimens that he had to work with. This has made less trouble 

 than with some other authors, because Say had that wonderful faculty 

 of seizing upon and describing the specific peculiarity of the individual 

 before him. I well remember the hours that I spent over his descrip- 

 tions, trying to identify captures made thirty-five years ago, and while 

 I was often disappointed, I succeeded in correctly identifying what I 

 now consider a really large percentage of the forms taken. Say's 

 experience meant hard work under difficulties: no money — very little 

 literature. His bed, for a time, the floor of the Exhibition Hall of the 

 Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, his food costing six 

 cents per day. Encouragements there were few — discouragements many 

 and none greater than the lack of literature. None of the younger men 

 can appreciate that hunger for books with which the older men were 

 compelled to fight and the enjoyment of getting into an alcove with 



