CURRENT NOTES. 146 



say, except that ** Am I my brother's keeper ? " keeps up the high 

 standard of the intensely powerful series of pictures that has become 

 so widely associated with Mr. Dollman's brilliant genius. The 

 portrait of Miss Grace Dollman by Mr. Richard Jack, too, is quite one 

 of the best portraits in the Exhibition. 



There is always a great amount of pleasure in receiving the 

 Annual Report of the Entomoloijical Society of Ontario, the 39th of 

 which we have just been looking through. There are many interest- 

 ing things in the volume as usual, but year by year, one misses more 

 and more, much of the pure science and literary flavour of past 

 volumes. Year by year the study of entomology per se is becoming- 

 still more restricted in the number of its votaries ; year by year 

 entomology, as a branch of biological natural history, becomes 

 yet more limited in its outlook, whilst a huge number of " professed 

 entomologists " come into the entomological world as ready-made 

 suns, bound to justify their existence (and salaries) by writing a 

 little in a lot of words, concerning a few so-called injurious species, 

 repeating the same facts again and again, usually in the crudest form, 

 and in such a way as to get on the nerves even of pachydermatous 

 people like ourselves ; their remarks are illustrated by the same worn- 

 out blocks by means of which their predecessors drove home the same 

 thread-bare facts about the same insects, a quarter af a century ago, 

 and one somehow wonders why. 



The answer is, of course, ready at hand. The society receives about 

 half its income as government grant, and is published by the Ontario 

 Department of Agriculture, Toronto. It becomes, therefore, a sort of 

 medium for the supply of information, on elementary entomological 

 matters, to the many uneducated persons who require it from the 

 Agricultural Bureau, and a good deal of this sort of material is printed. 

 But among this are some of the old-fashioned notes by naturalists for 

 naturalists. " The farmer's Wood lot," by the Rev. T. W. Fyles, 

 makes one wonder whether certain notes bearing the same name in 

 the old days of the F^nt. Wk. Intellitjencer, were the product of the same 

 hand ; Mr. Lyman gives " The life-history of Euchaetias oregonensis, 

 Stretch " ; " The Entomological Record for 1908," is by James Fletcher 

 and Arthur Gibson ; the last, alas, that will bear the impress of 

 the Canadian master in entomological science. Mr. T. D. Jarvis' 

 " Catalogue of the gall-insects of Ontario " is a most useful paper. 

 Other papers worthy of attention are " Some Beetle Haunts," by Mr. 

 F. J. A. Morris, and " Hydroecia micacea in Canada," by Mr. A. 

 Gibson. 



The volume unfortunately records the loss of one who, by common 

 consent, has long since been regarded as Canada's premier entomolo- 

 gist, viz., Dr. James Fletcher, who died on November 8th last. Born 

 at Ash, in Kent, on March 28th, 1862, he was educated at the King's 

 School, Rochester, was for some time employed in a bank in the City, 

 and left for Canada in 1874, to fill the position of clerk in the Bank 

 of British North America, which appointment he resigned to become 

 assistant in the Library of Parliament at Ottawa. His spare time 

 still, as ever, was devoted to botany and entomology, and this, in 

 time, led to his appointment as honorary Dominion Entomologist and 

 Botanist, and, in 1887, to his taking up the work of these departments 

 at the newly-established Experimental Farm. Since then he has 



