OF WASHINGTON. 7 



Entomology was in utter dependence upon European writers ; 

 it ought to extol the struggles timid at first but gradually 

 becoming bolder and more and more successful of a whole 

 generation of American writers to throw off this slavery, until 

 we come to a time when American insects can be studied from 

 American literature, and where at least one branch of Ameri 

 can entomology has attained a state of perfection which is not 

 paralleled in any other country. 



I am by no means competent to undertake such work, nor 

 could it be presented in a short address, except in the most 

 general outlines ; and I have contented myself with an exceed 

 ingly modest and insignificant part of such history, viz : to 

 enumerate the various ways in which the American contribu 

 tions of one hundred years to entomological science have been 

 presented to the public. 



The oldest, and, taken as a whole, most satisfactory way of 

 presenting to the public the results of scientific research is in 

 the form of separate books published and sold through the 

 regular book trade. Since this mode of publication is a com 

 mercial enterprise on the part of the publisher, or has to be 

 done at the expense of the author, it is not surprising that 

 with the few entomologists in the earlier part of this century 

 the number of separate books is exceedingly small. The very 

 first book exclusively devoted to North American insects is 

 that which goes by the name of Smith & Abbot on the lyepi- 

 doptera of Georgia, printed in 1798, but this was published 

 in England. The first book on insects ever published in 

 America is the Catalogue of the Coleoptera of Pennsylvania, 

 by the older Melsheimer, in 1806, if this little pamphlet may 

 properly be called a book. From that year we have to go 

 down to 1824 to find the next work, viz : Thomas Say's well- 

 known "American Entomology," of which three volumes 

 were published between 1824 and 1828.* This is, in reality, 

 the first great work produced in America by an American en 

 tomologist. From this work to the next there is another in 

 terval of more than ten years, for I fail to find a separate book 



* A few copies of a portion of the first volume were printed in 1817. 



