38 THE REPOliT OF THE No. 36 



Dominion, and moved to Ottawa, and his work since has been widely known. He 

 had to plan out the whole organization of the system and it has been wonderfully 

 successful. 



Now to get back to my early days. When I began collecting and studying 

 insects there were no publications available. The first book that gave me any idea 

 of Canadian insects was Gosse's "Canadian Naturalist." (Dr. Fyles mentioned this 

 in his paper last year). It was in the form of conversations carried on between 

 father and son describing all the natural phenomena that were to be observed dur- 

 ing each month of the year. There were illustrations given of a few butterflies 

 and beetles and the names of some of thenij but the list was very meagre. 



There was a printer in Toronto by the name of Couper, a man of no education- 

 to speak of, but who was devoted to entomology and nature in general. He pub- 

 lished a series of papers in the Canadian Journal, giving brief descriptions of all 

 the larger beetles to be found in the neighborhood of Toronto. This was an im- 

 mense help to me and others who were interested in these insects. He also published 

 a calendar, giving dates of appearance of birds and insects. In those days before 

 Confederation, Canada consisted of the provinces known as Upper and Lower, now 

 called Ontario and Quebec, and Parliament met in Toronto. It had a wonderful 

 library for those early days, in which I was permitted to go and read, but not to 

 take any books out; so I spent there any time I could, and copied out descriptions 

 of insects and made drawings of illustrations. The descriptions were mostly in 

 Latin or French. The Library had the early issues of the Journals of the Academy 

 of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and other Societies. It was thus no simple or 

 easy matter to get any literature whatever on the subject of entomology. The 

 greatest help I obtained was a copy of Westwood's Modern Classification of Insects, 

 which at the time I procured it was an expensive book. From Kirby and Spence's 

 Entomology I also learnt a great deal, though the third and fourth volumes which 

 were more technical, I could not get access to until sometime later. 



This, I hope, will give our younger members encouragement in carrying out 

 this study. If we had had such works as Comstock's Manual and Mrs. Comstock's 

 " How to Know the Butterflies," they would have been treasures indeed.. 



My acquaintance with Dr. Saunders led to our talking over matters from time 

 to time, and we resolved to try and get entomologists in Canada acquainted with 

 each other. By the aid of correspondence we got together the names of thirty-six 

 people in Canada who took some interest in entomology. The list was published 

 with addresses in the "Canadian Naturalist and Geologist," Volume VII, pages 

 199-201, Montreal, June, 1862. "We thought the time had arrived to hold a meet- 

 ing. We issued invitations to meet in Toronto at the residence of Prof. Croft, the 

 autam?i of 1862, but only ten were able to come. We discussed the question of 

 forming a Society, but the matter was postponed until the following spring, be- 

 cause it was thought that the members present were too few to be considered re- 

 presentative. We then called another meeting which was held on the 16th of April, 

 1863, in the rooms of the Canadian Institute in Toronto. There were only twelve 

 present, but we had letters from several others and so we decided to ffo on. A con- 

 stitution was adopted and the society was named The Entomological Society of 

 Canada. The members at that meeting were : Prof. Croft, D.C.L., who was elected 

 President; the Rev. Prof. W. Hincks, F.L.S., who acted as Chairman; Dr. Sangster, 

 Principal of the Normal School in Toronto and publisher of various school books 

 that were in use throughout this Province, one in use for many years was called 

 Sangster's Arithmetic. Mr. J. Hubbert, a Divinity student at Knox's College, 



