98 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS [Mar., 'll 



Teachers of natural history of those days had to cover 

 botany, zoology, geology, human physiology, chemistry and 

 natural philosophy. Collections and apparatus were practi- 

 cally non-existent. The publication of Harris's "Insects In- 

 jurious to Vegetation" in 1841, classic though it was, aroused 

 no great interest in the study of insects, and it remained for 

 Packard's "Guide to the Study of Insects," published in Salem 

 in 1869 and written by a young and enthusiastic worker in- 

 spired by Agassiz's training, to place entomology in America 

 on a footing so that the subject could be competently studied 

 and taught. The influence of Louis Agassiz in fact, perhaps 

 even more than is generally realized, was enormous in the 

 development of interest in natural history in America, and 

 entomology no less than the other branches of the subject 

 felt its stimulating effect. Moreover, the Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution in those older days under Joseph Henry did much by 

 the publication in its "Miscellaneous Collections" of the works 

 of Morris, Osten Sacken, Loew and Le Conte to help the 

 labors of the earlier group of workers. 



So we find the elder Fernald beginning to teach entomology 

 at the Maine State College in 1872, and a year later J. H. 

 Comstock began to teach it at Cornell. Fernald, however, 

 was professor of natural history and he had to teach all sorts 

 of things, while Comstock was confined to entomology and 

 invertebrate zoology. Thus, while Fernald was one of the 

 early teachers of entomology, Hagen was really the first pro- 

 fessor of this subject with Comstock as second. But it is not 

 my plan to discuss precedence in this direction. I wish to 

 show how recent are the beginnings of the study and how 

 rapidly it has advanced. As it happens, I was Comstock's 

 first student, and we began to work together in a little cramp- 

 ed room in the autumn of 1873, with little material, few books 

 and a poor microscope for our equipment. At the Agassiz 

 Museum, Hagen had his excellent library and good collection, 

 and he had Crotch and Schwarz and Hubbard, and a little 

 later, Samuel Henshaw working with him. Fernald was 

 working single-handed off in Maine. A few economic entom- 



