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Vol. XLVIII. LONDON, OCTOBER, 1916 No. 10 



POPULAR AND PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGY. 

 From the Editor's Office Chair. 



BY R. F. DOW, EDITOR OF THE BULLETIN OF THE BROOKLYN 

 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Practically every periodical devoted to insect study (and 

 there have been more than fifty such in North America) is the 

 organ of some scientific society, and its mission is to bring to that 

 society the credit of making permanent record of discoveries of 

 lasting scientific value. No entomological magazine has been 

 more than barely self-supporting, and few that much. The maga- 

 zine is necessarily "dry" reading, its papers for the most part 

 severely technical. The dyed-in-the-wool bug man rather resents 

 popular articles dealing in generalities. The paper most esteemed 

 is one making description of new species. Such is of value for 

 reference so long as Science endures, but how many wish to read a 

 minute description of the external anatomy of some insect he has 

 never seen? Only the few specialists in that particular group. 

 1 do not believe that the average subscriber to our entomological 

 journals finds an average of more than two interesting papers 

 out of the dozen in an average number. The Lepidopterist 

 does not care for a paper on Thrips, and so on. 



It is the editor who has to read all papers. If he be "on the 

 job" he takes down boxes of specimens and proves the correct- 

 ness of every detail of synopses submicted to him. It he can under- 

 stand, it follows that a specialist will have no difficulty. 

 The editor reads painstakingly, glossary in hand. The casual 

 reader gives two minutes, where he gives hours. 



And yet every editor, while on the one hand trying t3 do his 

 duty by strict Science (no matter how dry), makes his best effort 



