ENTOMOLOGICAL SOOIETY OF ONTARIO. 



ANNUAL ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. 

 By W. Hague Harrington, F.R.S.C. Ottawa. 



" An ant slow-burrowing in the e;irthy gloom, 

 A spider bathing in the dew at morn, 

 Or a brown bee in wayward fancy borne 

 From hidden bloom to bloom."' 



— L'tmfunan. 



Gentlemen, — My first duty to the members of the Entomological Society is to sin- 

 cerely thank them for the honor which they conferred upon me in re-electing me to be 

 their President, notwithstanding my inability to be present with them at the last annual 

 meeting. Those among you who may afterwards have read my address, as printed in the 

 Annual Report, may perhaps have congratulated yourselves that [ did not appear at the 

 meeting and read it to you in extenso. You need not, however, be alarmed lest you have 

 to listen to such an over-lengthy document on this occasion. 



My goodjriend, Mr. Fletcher, has kindly consented to address you on the injurious 

 "insects of the past season, and thus I am relieved of a task for which he is more compe- 

 tent, and for which his official duties so fully qualify him. You shall,- I rest assured, 

 find his remarks to be most inter-sting and profitable to you, both as regards economic 

 and scientific questions. 



The Report prepared by the Council will inform you as to the work performed by 

 the Society during the year, and as to its present financial standing and prospects, so 

 that, with regard to these points, I need merely express my sense of a 'ively satisfaction 

 in the knowledge that continued prosperity and success crown the efforts which you are 

 making to advance an interest in, and a truer knowledge of the attractive and deeply 

 interesting science of entomology, for the study of which you have been banded together 

 for so many years. 



After careful consideration of several topics which occurred to me as worthy of your 

 attention, I decided that a brief review of the results of the past twenty-five years mi^ht 

 not be unprofitab.e. I shall base my rems^rks upon the volumes of the Can'idian Ento- 

 mologist, and shall afterwards endeavor to indicite the dirt^ction in which future work 

 may be advantageously undert iken. The splendid series of twenty-five volumes of the 

 Canadian E)itoviologist, which have already been completed, constitute a verioable trea- 

 sure-house of information regarding the insects ot North Am-^^rica. The value of their 

 pages has been greatly increased by the constant contributions from the leading entomo- 

 logists of the neighbouring Republic, and by frequent articles from European correspond- 

 ents. The valuable papers received from these sources have dealt largely with the 

 Canadian fauna, and have often been based upon the captures of our members in Canada, 

 but my present remarks will be confined to a discussion of the work of our home mem- 

 bers as recorded by themselves. These laborers have ever been few in proportion to the 

 vast extent of country of which it is our privilege and duty to investigate the insect life. 

 We need not be surprised, tiierefore, because the investigated districts are very limit'-d in 

 comparison with the still unexplored fields which are waiting to yield up their treasures 

 to the careful investigator. The areas in which systematic and sustained work has been 

 done are, in fact, so few and so limited in extent, that on a map they appear almost as 

 mere starting-points. 



It is worthy of note that the labors of editing the tweaty-five volumes of the Enlo- 

 mologist hsive devolved equally upon Prof. Saunders and Dr. Rethune ; each of tiiese 

 gentlemen having edited twelve volumes and shared in the editing of volume eighteen. 

 The Society has owed much to the zeal and work of these gentlemen, whose contributions 

 appear in nearly every volum<», and much exceed the efforts of any other member. 

 Among their contributions are many valuable papers on our lepidoptera, containing 

 descriptions of their earlier stages, and also of some new species. Another s ries of very 

 interesting and valuable papers was that " On Some of our Common Insects," designed 

 to arouse the interest of some of those who might be taking up the study of entomology, 



