Vol. xxi] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS 477 



The Austrian-Lloyd steamer Africa left Trieste on the morning of 

 August the 2oth and returned to the same place August 26th. Most 

 of the towns in Dalmatia were visited. A numbers of congressionists 

 also visited Bosnia and Herzegovina. Owing to the coronation of 

 H. R. H. Prince Nicholas it was not possible to visit Cettinje, the 

 capitol of Montenegro. Prof. Herbert Osborn of Columbus, Ohio, 

 attended the Congress as representative of the Entomological Society 

 of America and the Ohio State University. He read a paper on 

 an entomological subject. Dr. Henry Skinner was also in attendance 

 as representative of the American Entomological Society and the 

 Entomological Society of America. The next Congress will be held 

 in Monte Carlo, in 1913. 



AN APPEAL To REASON. A while ago the German Entomological 

 National Museum in Berlin sent to me by mail a number of Hemiptera 

 for determination. Upon the arrival of the package I was informed 

 that I had to pay a duty of $7.13 as insects can be sent duty-free 

 only to museums. The sum is not very large, but repeated several 

 times a year it is not quite immaterial and this time I refused to pay 

 it and ordered the package to be sent back to Berlin. Is there no 

 entomologist in Washington of such social standing that he could 

 make it clear to the very wise legislators who trot in the footsteps 

 of Messrs. Payne and Aldrich that it is an outrage to have to pay a 

 regular monetary penalty to the Government for the right to devote 

 one's leisure hours to scientific studies? Is this one of those sacred 

 points in the law which it would be "unconstitutional'', or " un- 

 American" to repeal? Or is there in this country a museum-trust 

 trying to monopolize the study of foreign insects? Every time even 

 small boxes with one or two types, sent by sample-post from abroad 

 for comparison, are addressed to me, they must first go to the Customs 

 in Boston where they sometimes are tampered with, apparently sus- 

 pected to be something else than insects. Recently one of my cor- 

 respondents had the happy idea to send some insects via Japan and 

 San Francisco, and then for the first time I got them without trouble, 

 though rather belated. 



Yet difficult as it is to receive insects, it is hardly easier to send 

 them abroad. When I sent my first box from Minnesota the post- 

 master, contrary to the regulations of the Universal Postal Union, 

 refused to despatch it. As he had got his job from political reasons 

 without knowing anything about postal matters (something unthink- 

 able on the other side of the ocean), I realized that it was useless to 

 argue with him and wrote to the Postmaster-General in Washingon 

 whereupon I promptly got justice. Upon presentation of my first insect 

 box at the postoffice in this city the postal official refused to forward 

 it because the insects looked to him "poisonous"' and "dangerous to 

 handle." He did not yield until after a lengthy quibbling which has 

 been more or less vigorously repeated every time I have had some- 

 thing to send. 



Anywhere in Europe and its colonies, even in the remotest cornei 

 of darkest Russia, entomologists can send and receive insects without 

 the slightest trouble, not to speak of duties. How long shall this re- 

 main a pin in dcsidcrium here? E. BERGROTH, Fitchburg, Mass. 



