I8Q5-] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 3 



pecuniarily responsible for the engagements of others, a course 

 ending in failure and bankruptcy. His financial reverses, how- 

 ever, do not seem to have weighed heavily upon his mind, but, 

 on the contrary, as the grieved child turns to its mother's arms 

 for solace and soothing words, so Thomas Say, in his financial 

 troubles, appears to have sought consolation in his studies of 

 nature, quietly living what Bryant wrote in the opening stanza 

 of Thanatopsis, and, disregarding his losses, found that healing 

 sympathy, that stole away their sharpness ere he was aware. 



Mr. Say became a member of The Academy of Natural Sciences 

 of Philadelphia in April, 1812, soon after it had been reorgan- 

 ized, and when the crisis in his financial affairs left him stranded, 

 took up his abode in the building in which the Academy held its 

 meetings, and turning his back on the financial world as it were, 

 began his entomological labors in earnest. It was here that he 

 was brought in close contact with his afterwards friend and bene- 

 factor, William Maclure, Esq., but of their relations later we 

 shall have more to say further on in our series of sketches. It 

 was in the Journal of the Academy of Sciences, began in 1817, 

 that Say first appears as an author, which seemed to strengthen 

 the bonds binding him more closely to his chosen field of scien- 

 tific investigation. In 1818, with Messrs. Maclure and Titian R. 

 Peale, he visited the sea islands and adjacent coast of Georgia 

 and eastern Florida, from which latter region they were driven 

 by the hostility of the Spanish, who yet had control of the terri- 

 tory. It was doubtless this journey that paved the way for his 

 connection with the two scientific expeditions fitted out by the 

 United States Government, and placed under the command of 

 Major Long, with Thomas Say as chief zoologist. The years 

 intervening between 1818 and 1825, when he left Philadelphia, 

 were certainly busy ones for Say, who, aside from his connection 

 with these expeditions which necessarily required considerable 

 time in accompanying them to the then unexplored regions of 

 the West, he was for a time Professor of Natural History in the 

 University of Pennsylvania, and of Zoology to the Philadelphia 

 Museum. Two of the three volumes of his "American Ento- 

 mology" were published, and besides this all of the ornitholog- 

 ical papers appearing in the Journal of the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences, to which the name of Charles Bonaparte is attached, 

 were edited by him at the request of the author. More than this, 



