STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 193 



ligible, would be unknown hieroglyphics to you. I want it to be some- 

 where where it will be preserved. Individually, I would like to have 

 it to aid me in carrying out an enterprise which Mr. Walsh and myself 

 began, and also to guard against the possibility of the cabinet perishing. 

 You know how easy it is for collections of insects to be destroyed. 

 The collection of Dr. Harris, no one having any real interest in it, has 

 not been well preserved, and to-day that collection is partly a ruin, so 

 that many of the type specimens that belonged to this father of prac- 

 tical entomology in our country are actually lost to science. The same 

 may be said of the collection of Thomas Say. Now in Mr. Walsh's 

 collection there are numbers of insects that are of great scientific value 

 and interest, but of no jjractical value whatever, and unless you can put 

 them in the hands of some one who can appreciate and understand 

 them they will do no good. I told Mr. Swiler that I would like to 

 have it, and besides paying the sum required, I have promised — as a 

 condition of the bargain — to prepare from it a duplicate collection of 

 the noxious and beneficial insects for the State. The fame of Mr. 

 Walsh was greater abroad than it ever began to be in Eock Island, and I 

 want the scientific world to feel that they can refer to that cabinet in 

 the hands of some one who can make the best use of it to my late 

 associate's name and honor. Whether that party be myself or Mr. 

 Walsh's successor, is not of such moment. 



Dr. Shimer — I may state that I wrote a letter to Mrs. Walsh about 

 this cabinet. I made a proposition of this kind : that it be left it 

 in the hands of the State Entomologist, whoever might be appointed^ 

 until the duplicates had been taken, and then they might dispose of 

 it. My idea was that it could then be disposed of to the highest 

 bidder. Mr. Walsh was a great man as an entomologist — more than 

 any man that has ever lived in America; and this State ought to lay 

 bold of the work not only for the sake of the injurious and beneficial 

 insects, but for all of them. He said he intended to duplicate all tha 

 insects for the State. This State, I hope, does not intend to secure 

 merely those which are injurious or beneficial. We ought to have a 

 duplicate of every insect in the State. In the meantime, I hope 



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