32 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 15 



pillar. Starting from that zero point of knowledge, this man with 

 untiring energy and devotion in the short period he was able to work 

 (I forget just how long ; but I think his working period was only seven- 

 teen years) made a worldwide reputation. You are familiar with his 

 works. In our department we have a great accumulation of unpublished 

 painstaking notes and photographs which are still a constant source of 

 information. 



It is a bromidic remark to say that we are living in an age of great 

 development, but nevertheless it is true, and especially true of ento- 

 mology. I think that the younger members of the society, the second 

 stage n>Tnphs (laughter) can not appreciate what a change there has 

 been, in the memorv^ of some of us who are here. 



I am going to tell you a personal experience. It would be difficult 

 to-day, I think, for you to find a young person interested in nature who 

 does not know that there is such a science as entomology. But that 

 was not so fifty years ago. A little over fifty years ago I became inter- 

 ested in botany. I was at that time stud}dng in the winter at an acade- 

 my, and sailing on the Great Lakes in the summer. I carried on my 

 study of botany on the Great Lakes. You would not thinlc that a 

 ver}^ good place to study botany, but I had a tin box made — ^had never 

 heard of a vasculum — and when we were in port I collected plants and 

 put them in the box, closed it up tightly, and then when we got outside 

 I analyzed the plants at my leisure. Of course the running down of a 

 plant to its specific name was the botany of those days. 



I scon became dissatisfied with that. I saw references in the back 

 part of the book I was using to flowerless plants, and I wanted to learn 

 something about them. So I started on the search for some book to 

 help m.e. Nobody that I knew could tell me what to get, so each time 

 that I was in port I hunted the book stores for a book on crytogamic 

 botany. The clerks used to stare at this kid who was using words 

 longer than he was, but one day in Bufl'alo I went into a book store 

 and asked the clerk if they had any books on cryfjtogamic botany, 

 and he said tbat if they had any they would be in the back part of their 

 store. He took me back to a case where they had segregated their 

 works on natural histor\', and I began to look for the desired book. 

 I cam.e upon a copy of Harris's "Insects Injurious to Vegetation." 

 At that m-oment I learned that there were books written about insects. 

 I had seen insects in my collecting that had interested me, but had no 

 idea that anybody ever wrote about them. I took the book to the 

 clerk and asked him the price. He said it was ten dollars. That was 

 a good deal for a lad working for pretty small wages. I handed the book 

 back to him, sorrowfully and went back to the schooner, but I couldn't 

 get that book out of my m.ind. The next morning I went to the captain 



