Twelfth Eepout op the State Entomologist 343 



which insect life is presented to us — the egg, the larva, the pupa, and the 

 imago, must receive its share of attention. The varied habits are to be 

 observed and noted, under the comphcations frequently existing of 

 change under changed conditions of focd-plant, climate or locality. 



The extent of the study will further appear from a consideration of 

 the omniprescence of insects. As I have elsewhere written, " they abound 

 in our homes, our gardens, orchards, fields, vineyards and forests. In 

 the vegetable kingdom, they are found in the seed, the root, the stalk or 

 trunk, the pith, the bark, the twig, the bud, the leaf, the blossom, and 

 the fruit — within or upon every portion of the vegetable organism. They 

 are parasitic on our persons and upon or within all of our domestic 

 animals. They attack and destroy fishes and birds. They have their 

 natural home in many articles of food. By their digusting presence and 

 annoyance they may render our homes untenable. They burrow within 

 our household and agricultural implements. They destroy our furniture 

 and our clothing. They occasionally take possession of our books. No 

 asylum is so secure that they may not intrude; no condition in life is ex- 

 empt from their presence and attack." 



VI. The Study has not been given its proper Share of Attention. 



If you have followed me as I have attempted, in the brief time that I 

 dare claim on this occasion, to show you the value of the Study of Ento- 

 mology as a mental discipline — the facility with which it may be pursued — 

 the interest attaching to it — its great practical importance — and the 

 broad range that it embraces, you will, I thmk, agree with me, that it is very 

 far from receiving the attention that it deserves and may justly claim. 

 Notwithstanding the enormous losses annually sustained from insect dep- 

 redations, how very few comparatively there are among us who can 

 properly apply the familiar names of " bug," " beetle," or " butterfly." 

 There are those whose crops are annually depleted, needlessly, to the 

 amount of hundreds of dollars, who do not know that the caterpillar is 

 but an immature stage of the winged moth or butterfly. This day, I find 

 in a pretentious journal a notice of a destructive insect to this eftect: 

 " The insect appears first in the form of a small moth. In a few days, it 

 sheds its wings and becomes a caterpillar, and a week thereafter it lays 

 its eggs, each caterpillar producing two hundred." 



In how many of our public schools and academies is Entomology given 

 place? I do not know of one. In nearly all of our higher institutions 

 and private schools, Botany is taught, and yet the former is certainly of 

 far greater importance in the broad range of its economic applications. 

 The State Normal College at Albany and the Oswego Normal School, 

 have given excellent entomological instruction. Cornell University sus- 



