THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST 



the undergraduate activities. As pointed out in an earlier para- 

 graph, I took the studies I Hked, and indeed I have found since 

 that the studies that I chose of my own voHtion have been of 

 much use to me — I hke to think much more so than any of the 

 prescribed courses would have been. But when it came to gradu- 

 ation, it was a somewhat different story. The Faculty Committee 

 insisted that I should round matters up, and I had to do some 

 intense cramming in physics before I was given my B.S. When it 

 came to a thesis, however, I went back to my first love and 

 prepared a rather elaborate treatise on the "Respiratory System 

 of the Larva of Corydalis cornuta," an aquatic insect largely used 

 by bass fishermen as bait, and often known by the curious name 

 of Hellgrammite. 



And now came the question of career. I wanted to be a 

 teacher of natural history, but the men in the Faculty who 

 were friends of my mother told her that it would be foolish to 

 rely on anything of that sort, and advised her to place me in 

 line for a medical career. As this probably would have been my 

 second choice, I entered the University for a post-graduate course 

 in studies preparatory to medicine, taking up histology, chemistry 

 and advanced botany (including what was then known of my- 

 cology, and what was then beginning to be known as bacteri- 

 ology). And I also took up comparative anatomy. I entered 

 upon all these studies with enthusiasm and learned a lot. Dear 

 old Professor S. H. Gage and I, working together in Burt G. 

 Wilder's laboratory, learned a great deal and enjoyed every 

 minute of our association. Gage had graduated with me and 

 was now instructor. We had many funny experiences, for ex- 

 ample: Gage had seen in a microscope journal that a new 

 reagent — osmic acid — had been found to be an excellent stainer 

 of nerve tissues, and he promptly ordered an ounce. When the 

 bill came in it proved to be something like one hundred dollars, 



[9] 



