23 



periodical. Already we are assured of a monthly circulation of from 

 ] 0.000 to 20,000 copies. We doubt not that entomologists in all parts 

 of the United States will most cheerfully lend their gratuitous aid. It 

 is the hajtpiness of this class of men to contribute their knowledge 

 for the welfare of humanity. We think we have devised a plan to 

 bring out their exertions in a way the community will gladly wel- 

 come. The members will do all in their power to extend the useful- 

 ness of this Society and to collect, if possible, the moderate permanent 

 fund already named. We believe we can in no better way do honor 

 to the memory of Wilson. This Society is his work, and to this he 

 gave, during the last few years of his life, his almost exclusive 

 devotion. 



Dr. Wilson never, to any considerable extent, became an author. 

 His only efi'ort in this way. of which we have heard, is a joint paper be- 

 tween himself and the distinguished ornithologist Mr. John Cassin, Vice 

 President of the Academy of Natural Sciences, and who probably en- 

 joyed more of his intimacy and confidence than any other man, except 

 his own immediate family. That paper was published in the Proceed- 

 ings of the Academy of Natural Sciences for May, 1863. The learned 

 authors there discuss a subject quite worthy of themselves ; the exist- 

 ence of a department of organic life intermediate between plants and 

 animals. The subject is beset with difficulties where precise definitiont 

 are to be made, and where clear lines of demarkation are to be drawn 

 between different objects. Nevertheless the subject exists notwith- 

 standing the difficulties; and these difficulties seem to be of our mak- 

 ing in our wilful efforts to systematise, in our trying to divide whei-e 

 there are no natural divisions, and trying to separate things which are 

 inseparably joined. The opinions and reasonings of these authors seem 

 perfectly sound, but when they come to make the separation by name 

 between the objects which belong to their own intermediate depart- 

 ment, and those which belong to the departments of plants and ani- 

 mals, their troubles begin ; for how can they avoid including in their 

 intermediate department objects which are plainly animals on one hand 

 and plainly plants on the other? Probably the conclusion of the Sci- 

 entific World will ultimately be this: that organic life originally began 

 in our world in organisms which were strictly neither plants nor ani- 

 mals ; that variations occurred, as they now daily occur, no offspring 

 being the exact image of a parent; that at length variations extended 

 so far as to become plants on the one hand and animals on the other ; 

 that as improved forms of life crowd the older and more imperfect 



