Twelfth Report of the State Entomologist 337 



guided and formed into proper habits of observation, thought and expres- 

 sion. To these ends, I believe entomological study to offer better 

 discipline than the study of mathematics or the classics to which so much 

 time is devoted and far beyond what may, by any possibility, in a lai-ge 

 majority of students, be of any material practical importance. 



But why may this be accomplished through the study of the insect 

 world, better than by some other branch of natural history ? Weanswer^ 

 because of the greater number of objects that in a given time may be 

 brought together for study — the insect world presenting, as it does, by 

 far a larger number of species than all the other classes of the animal 

 kingdom combined. With this almost boundless number of species, it 

 follows that there must often be but minute differences between them, not 

 perceptible but through careful comparison, and often demanding the 

 microscope for their detection. It is impossible that any one who has 

 made a collection of insects of considerable aize — separated them in 

 their usually accepted seven orders, named such as he has been able to 

 with the literature at his command or by comparison with other scientific 

 collections, and arranged them systematically in proper cases, in their 

 families, genera, species, and varieties — could have done this without 

 having greatly strengthened his faculties of observation, comparison, dis- 

 crimination, memory, and having acquired habits of study, industry, 

 delicate manipulation, order, neatness, precision, and the like, which shall 

 serve him in whatever position in life he may be placed, and cling to him 

 to his life's end. 



II. The Facilities for Entomological Study. 



The entomologist, if unable to search for his material — we will not 

 say, if not caring to seek it, for a lazy naturalist would be an anomaly — 

 may have abundant material come to him unsought. As he walks the 

 street, " the shard-borne beetle with its drowsy hum " flies in his face or 

 alights upon his clothing ; the moth sits at rest upon a tree-trunk or fence- 

 paling as if asking for admiration and capture ; the caterpillar drops upon 

 him by its silken thread from an overhanging branch, or exposes itself as 

 it travels over the sidewalk, to his meditative downcast gaze. Rapt in 

 study in the seclusion of his room, the sudden thrust of the sharp lancet 

 of Stomoxys calciirans, causes its capture and invites examination of the 

 curious projecting blood-sucking apparatus which, without critical obser- 

 vation, seems the only difference between it and the harmless common 

 house-fly ; or, curiously plumed creatures of delicate forms and colors, 

 attracted by the light upon his study-table, will flit over his paper to mar 

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