THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST 



who wrote the definition of the last word in the Enghsh 

 language. So in at least one very small way Coues was justified. 



Several amusing things happened in the course of the dic- 

 tionary work. For example, one of the resonant words selected by 

 Coues and sent over to me was Dundubia. It was easy of defini- 

 tion, but when it came to its etymology I was stumped. I 

 searched for all possible Greek and Latin origins, and then wrote 

 on the margin, under the head of Etymology, "Try Sanskrit," 

 in much the same way that one would say, "It's all Greek to me." 

 Some weeks afterwards Benjamin E. Smith wrote me, "Pro- 

 fessor Whitney [a great philologist of Yale, who was the 

 Philological Editor of the dictionary] decides that you are right 

 in deriving this word from the Sanskrit. It comes from the 

 Sanskrit Dundub, which means a drum." As Dundubia is a 

 genus of Cicadas — insects that make a peculiar drumming noise 

 in the trees — the applicability of the name was obvious, I after- 

 wards found out that the French authors, Amayot and Serville, 

 who wrote many papers on the insects of this group, had lived 

 in India, knew many Sanskrit words, and had used several of 

 them in their nomenclature. I hope that Professor Whitney 

 finally died in the full belief that I was a Sanskrit scholar. 



The whole work was extremely interesting and had a high 

 educational value. Things that I learned then have been of 

 service to me in many ways. Then, too, the extra money was 

 a great help. It brought me in, say, from twenty to fifty dollars 

 a month for a long time. Years later I helped in the revision, 

 made some changes, introduced a good many new words, and 

 made some more money. It is a very good thing to have been 

 connected with a dictionary of this high character and to have 

 had dealings with such courteous and generous people as there 

 were in the New York office. 



Later, on request, I contributed several articles to the Century 



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