6 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



should have commemorated the one-hundredth anniversary of 

 the birthday of Thomas Say, who was the first to make a deter 

 mined effort to create an American literature on American insects. 

 It is just a hundred years ago that the first scientific collections 

 of insects were made by Peck and the older Melsheimer, many 

 of the insects from the latter collections being still preserved. 

 Above all our American scientific literature on insects is now 

 about one hundred years old. To whom the honor belongs 

 of being our first entomologist depends largely upon individual 

 opinion. William Dandridge Peck, who commenced to write in 

 1795, was, no doubt, our first scientific entomologist; but the 

 various articles on insects by the few earlier authors, and 

 notably by Barton, the Bartrams, and others, are by no means 

 inferior in scientific character but their authors cannot be 

 called entomologists. This centennial of our literature should 

 not be celebrated by a centennial speech simply praising the 

 great progress made within a hundred years, but by giving a 

 full history of American Entomological Science. And such 

 history is a desideratum ; " for the knowledge of the evolution 

 of a science is to the student of the same importance as to the 

 architect a thorough knowledge of the foundation upon which 

 he intends to erect his building." To be sure we have a 

 history, viz : the ' ' Contributions toward a History of Ento 

 mology in the United States, ' ' by our fellow member and senior 

 of American entomologists, Dr. J. G. Morris, read before the 

 National Institution in 1844 ;* but, although containing many 

 interesting facts, this history was written at a time when the 

 study of entomology was at very low tide in this country and 

 when many data regarding literature and entomologists were 

 still unknown. 



American Entomology offers a most inviting field to anyone 

 who is willing to write its full history. It should explain the 

 reasons why in the earliest time entomological science was cul 

 tivated here so much later than Botany, Ornithology, Ichthy 

 ology and other branches of natural history ; it should point 

 out how this neglect resulted in a long period when American 



* Published in Silliman's Jour. Am. Arts and Sc. , 1846, pp. 17-27. 



