INTRODUCTION 



a Dane by birth and education, who has carried out most 

 valuable investigations for us in foreign lands, and who is today 

 a world authority on an important group of insects. 



Very likely people might find the story of an entomologist— 

 that is, an average, typical entomologist— interesting; but the 

 particular entomologist who writes this, being perhaps more like 

 the average man than is the average entomologist, has had the 

 good luck to be thrown into positions in which he has been able 

 to draw forcible attention to the insect problem, since he has 

 in the course of the years taken part (usually a very small part) 

 in many investigations that have been successful and have proved 

 useful to all humanity. So why should not his life be interesting? 



In the pages that will follow I hope to say many things that 

 are far from entomology. I bring them in because I think them 

 interesting, and because, after all, they help to prove my point, 

 which is that an entomologist is very much like other people. 

 The telling of these stories, relating as they do to an interesting 

 period of sixty-odd years and to many interesting people and 

 events, shows that he may be like other men. And then, too, 

 many of these rather gossipy notes would be lost if I did not put 

 them down here. Possibly this would not be a very great loss, 

 but the reader will decide. 



[vii] 



