April, '09] JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 101 



suggestion, and that is : Do not try to become famous or even noted 

 except as a conscientious man. Get close to nature and throw the 

 whole weight of every faculty that you possess into learning the truth 

 unmixed with error, and get as near the whole truth as it is pos- 

 sible for one human to secure. Your province is to get facts sifted 

 and tried by every clarifying process you can devise, with a view 

 of eliminating obscurity and error. Pay absolutelj- no attention what- 

 ever to your own individual prominence, and as fast as you secure 

 the real truths involved, just so fast w^ill you gain the reputation of 

 being something far above notorious. Success will not onh^ come to 

 you but be even begging you to take notice thereof. The old thread- 

 bare saying that ' ' Some men are born great ; others have greatness 

 thrust upon them" is not true. Keal greatness is never inherited; 

 and the man who has real greatness thrust upon him has always 

 bought it in some manner with the best years of his life. Substitute 

 notoriety for greatness and I have nothing to say. The man in search 

 of notoriety is generally the one that succeeds in getting in the way. 

 In fact such is his usual mode of procedure in making himself notori- 

 ous. For this reason the man who is trying with all his might and 

 main to wrest from nature her most profound truths is obstructed by 

 the one who, not knowing what truth and accuracy really are, will 

 place himself squarely in opposition. Thus it is that the man who 

 sets out to devote himself to dragging forth truth out of darkness or 

 obscurity will find that his is not a bed of roses. Not only must he 

 hold his own faculties under a continued surveillance lest he be 

 cheated by his own eyes and mind, but he must always be more or less 

 hampered by the frailties of those who find it easier to adopt other less 

 commendable methods. Within the last two months there have come to 

 my desk two publications from as many different states relating to 

 two different though closely allied insects. In neither one is there 

 anji;hing new, nothing to indicate that either insect has ever been 

 known outside the state where it is mentioned, and not a word to 

 show that anyone, living or dead, except the author, had ever seen or 

 studied the species. Quite recently one of the institutions from 

 which one of these documents emanated published a newspaper bul- 

 letin, not necessarily by, or even with the knowledge of an entomolo- 

 gist, giving what purports to be the results of several years' experi- 

 mentation, proving certain facts that were well known and established 

 before that institution came into existence. Any well informed -en- 

 tomologist could readily cite the work of investigators, some of whom 

 are still living and some dead, who contributed to the sum of this 

 knowledge; but in this printed document to which I refer every 



