THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST 



birds; one or two others became interested in land shells; but 

 that was as far as any specific interest in natural history went 

 until, when I was seven or eight years old, I visited an aunt, Mrs. 

 Candace Wheeler, who lived near Jamaica, Long Island. There 

 one winter I met the children of some neighbors named Stewart, 

 and two of the boys were collecting cocoons. I became interested 

 at once when they told me that beautiful moths would issue 

 from these cocoons in the late spring. I took some of the cocoons 

 home with me to Ithaca, and was entranced when the moths 

 (Crecopia and Promethia) burst out the following May. From 

 that time on I collected moths and butterflies. Rather strangely, 

 my mother and father encouraged me. They bought me a little 

 book by Mrs. Mary Treat called "The Butterfly Hunters," and 

 when I was ten years old my father gave me the wonderful 

 book by T. W. Harris — "Insects Injurious to Vegetation." 



Boys are imitative, and occupations of that sort are attractive, 

 so a dozen of us organized The Ithaca Natural History Society. 

 We had weekly meetings and read papers and talked over many 

 puzzling things. In the meantime Cornell University had been 

 started, and soon there was established a University Natural 

 History Society. But the meetings of that society were not half 

 so interesting as were those of our little group. We made no at- 

 tempt to build up a society collection, but nearly every one of 

 the boys had his own private collection, and the collector's spirit 

 was almost as intense as that shown by many older people in 

 many different directions. This little society lasted till some of 

 us were ready to enter college, and even afterwards. 



My father was not a college man. In the old-fashioned way 

 he studied law in a law office, and was admitted to the Bar on 

 examination. He thought that a college education was not neces- 

 sary, that it was in a way a waste of time, and it had been his 

 intention to place me in his office as a student at the age of six- 



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