172 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL.84 



Entomological Society, of Philadelphia, and the just-founded Cam- 

 bridge and Brooklyn Entomological Societies were the only societies 

 of entomologists, and there were no journals except the Canadian 

 Entomologist and Psyche, the organ of the Cambridge society, started 

 in 1874. There were practically no books except Harris' well known 

 " Insects Injurious to Vegetation " and Packard's " Guide to the 

 Study of Insects," and no transactions or proceedings except those 

 of the Philadelphia society started in 1861. 



The economic entomologists had recently made their appearance. 

 Asa Fitch was closing his work on the farm and orchard insects of 

 New York ; Benjamin Dann Walsh and William LeBaron had pub- 

 lished reports in Illinois, and C. V. Riley had issued seven of his ex- 

 tremely fine annual reports in Missouri. 



All this was in sharp contrast to conditions in Europe where there 

 were literally hundreds of books and dozens of entomological socie- 

 ties and probably thousands of collectors. A bibliographical list pub- 

 lished by Hagen in 1862 comprised two fat volumes covering more 

 than a thousand pages. 



This contrast at that time was probably due largely to the want 

 of lx)oks on American insects and of catalogues and check lists in the 

 dififerent orders to encourage young collectors. And then, teachers 

 were wanting. Aside from Dr. H. A. Hagen at Harvard, there were 

 no teachers, and as a matter of fact he had practically no students. 

 Comstock at Cornell and Fernald at Orono, Maine, were soon to 

 heg'm their teaching, and Packard had given a course at Orono ; 

 but at this period, although there were i)rofessors of what was then 

 termed " natural history " or " natural philosophy," few or none of 

 them knew enough about insects to give any broad instruction. Years 

 before. Doctor Harris, while Librarian at Plarvard, gave talks to 

 limited classes and took them on brief field excursions, and is said 

 to have been a most inspiring teacher, but none of his students took 

 up entomology seriously at a later date. 



The only collections worthy of note at that time and which may be 

 termed public collections were those at Cambridge, in the recently 

 founded Museum of Comparative Zoology, and at Philadelphia, in 

 the building of the Academy of Natural Sciences. 



Until one has assembled these data, or considered them, it is 

 impossible to realize the comparative paucity of our knowledge of 

 American insects only 50 years ago. A great many of them had been 

 described and named, but largely by European entomologists, and 

 the descriptions were published in European magazines, transactions, 

 or proceedings; and it is pitiful to note what a large proportion of 



