Howard — Early Days of the Biological Society. 279 



been in existence for a long period, and I can see that the mam- 

 malogists, the ornithologists and the herpetologists and the mal- 

 acologists will, before many years, be founding their own local 

 organizations (the helminthologists already have one). But if 

 they remain satellites and circle around the old parent body we 

 shall not complain. Most of the special workers, however, fail 

 to see the advantage of the broadening out which the meetings 

 of the Biological Society can give them. For myself, I am an 

 entomologist all day long and every day in the week — I am liv- 

 ing with entomology. But I am not a biologist unless I not only 

 read along other lines but unless I go to the meetings of this so- 

 ciety; and I enjoy it honestly, more than any other society. I 

 like to hear Hay, Jr., talk about his turtles; I enjoy Hitchcock 

 when he lectures on grasses ; when Lyon talks bacteria my mind 

 is open; when the elder Hay comes in with a monstrous fossil I 

 listen with the same pleasure as when Palmer exhibits one of his 

 perennial finds along the shores of Chesapeake Bay even if I am 

 somewhat saddened by his pained expression of countenance 

 whenever he speaks in public; and the other Palmer in his new 

 side line of the history of science is intensely interesting, and I 

 leave every meeting feeling perfectly convinced that if I were 

 taken away from Washington one of the things which I should 

 most mourn would be my inability to attend every one of these 

 meetings. I fail entirely to understand why others of the older 

 members of the society have not this same feeling. 



