PROCEEDINGS ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



THE ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



BY L. O. HOWARD. 



In the life of a nation, twenty-five years is but a moment of 

 time. In the life of a great scientific society, a quarter of a 

 century is but a brief period. Mut in the life of an individual, 

 twenty-five years becomes a very appreciable space. Think, 

 for example, of the individuals composing our Society, which 

 commemorates its twenty-fifth anniversary to-night. At the 

 time of its founding, of the eleven men present, Riley, Barn- 

 ard, Johnson, Morris, and Schafhirt are gone, and of the 

 others only Mann. Schwarz, and the speaker remain in Wash- 

 ington. Of the twenty-six members listed in the Proceedings 

 published nearly two years later, teil have died, and only seven 

 remain in Washington. Morris was already an old man, but 

 lived eleven years longer, until 1895, when he died at the ripe 

 age of 92 a notable example of physiological value of ento- 

 mological pursuits. Riley and Uhler were in their prime. 

 Heidemann and Pergande were still young. Marx and Lug- 

 ger were in their vigorous forties, men of wide experience and 

 of infinite humor, whose droll stories will live perhaps almost 

 as long as their recorded scientific achievements. Schwarz was 

 in his active thirties, but he looks as young now as he did then, 

 and is mentally if not physically as active. Casey and Smith 

 and Mann and Hubbard and 1 were still in our hopeful 

 twenties, all of us to round out the following quarter century 

 except poor Hubbard, the best of us all. Ashmead and Mar- 

 latt, Fox and Hopkins, Webster and Ouaintance, Dyar and 

 Currie, and the rest of you appear on the scene much later. 

 Some of you, Crawford and Phillips, our Secretaries, with 

 P>urke and Webb and others, were perhaps being spanked and 

 put to bed that memorable night in February, 1884, while still 

 others were disembodied spirits floating around in the ether 

 waiting to be born and absolutely uncertain as yet whether you 

 could select parents who would allow you to become entomol- 



ogists or not. 



Many of the facts connected with the first ten years of the 

 Society's existence have been summarized by the speaker in 

 a paper read at the one hundredth meeting, June 7, 1894. Cer- 

 tain intimate facts concerning the composition and business of 

 the Society were treated in a more or less statistical manner, 

 but a number of interesting and important facts were brought 

 out, and, reading it over agctin after a lapse of fifteen years, I 

 am particularly impressed by the summary of the character of 

 papers read in those first ten years. While the communications 



