10 PROCEEDINGS ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



ings that have been held in the last fifteen years with those re- 

 corded in my review of the work during the first ten years. 

 There has been a. decided change. The Proceedings are not 

 less valuable, they are undoubtedly more valuable, since per- 

 haps the majority of the communications of the first ten years 

 were short though interesting notes. Nevertheless, I doubt 

 whether even such an enthusiastic entomologist as dear 

 old James Fletcher could have written me about the 

 Proceedings of the past five years as he did after reading the 

 first number of the Proceedings published by the Society in 

 18X6, that he had taken it up after dinner and had not laid it 

 down until he had read the last word at midnight ! 



This means that our Proceedings in the first place contain 

 more lengthy systematic papers, and in the second place of a 

 more serious and more permanent character. Even Fletcher's 

 letter, however, need not indicate that the early Proceedings 

 had any of the character of romance, and any of us glancing 

 through the pages of that first number must realize that the 

 man who collects in the field and who closely studies living in- 

 sects will find there the observation; of others who did the 

 same and who did them with their eyes and minds open. 



In his address, 'Riley spoke with pride of the Division he 

 had founded. Let us see just what was the composition of 

 that Division at that time. It consisted of Riley, himself, of 

 Mann, of Pergande, of Schwarz, of Barnard, of Koebele, of 

 Smith, and of Howard. Marx was employed on another roll 

 as the general artist of the Department, and Heidetnann as gen- 

 eral engraver for the Department. Riley went on to state that 

 the Division fell far short of his ideal and of the necessities of 

 the country, and spoke of the difficulties of building it up to that 

 ideal under the unfortunate political unscientific atmosphere 

 that pervaded the Department ; and it would be very interesting 

 to talk it over with him were he still with us, and find out how 

 far the organization now falls short of his ideal. We are 

 perfectly aware that it has not yet satisfied the necessities of 

 the country, yet, as imaginative as Riley was and filled as he 

 was with the evidences of that artistic temperament which ac- 

 counted for some of his peculiarities, I hardly believe that he 

 would have expected at this time a larger or more efficient or- 

 ganization than now exists. Against the eight men he then had 

 on his rolls, we have more than a hundred scientifically trained, 

 and, against the appropriation of something like $20,000 which 

 then was spent by the Government upon entomological work, 

 funds now exceed half a million per annum. 



