Report of the State Entomologist. 171 



absolutely perfect, with the exception of a small angle of one wing. The antennas are 

 nearly perfect. The markings of the wings are perfectly pi^eserved, and in portions of 

 the surface the form of the scales can be determined with the miscroscope." 



Entomology in our Schools. 



I regret that I have to report that entomology has not been given the place in our schools 

 that it deserves. In our State, the Albany Normal School and the Oswego Normal School 

 have given excellent instruction in it— in the latter united with laboratory work. Cornell 

 University sustains a professorship in entomology, with courses of lectures, a labora- 

 tory, a large named and classified collection, and a library so rich in its serials that 

 every entomological journal published in the world finds place in it. In some of our 

 public schools occasional talks are given upon insects when teachers may chance to 

 have a taste for the study. Elsewhere, lectures upon entomology are given in course at 

 Harvard University, the State College of Maine, the Michigan State Agricultural 

 College, Purdue University at Layfayotte, Ind., the Illinois Industrial University, the 

 Iowa Agricultural College and the Kansas State Agricultural College. In each of the 

 State institutions, particular attention is paid to the economic aspect of the science. In 

 some of the common schools of California the science is taught and collections are 

 made by the pupils, in consideration of the interest lately aroused by the great increase 

 of fruit insects in that State. 



The above, with the exception of some academic instruction in other States, is the 

 sum, so far as known to me, of what is being done in our institutions of learning in 

 this department of science. 



Will you pardon me if I go beyond the scope of my topic, to enter a protest against 

 this neglect of the study ? Its importance, viewed from a utilitarian standpoint alone, 

 as might easily be shown, entitles it to a reasonable share of attention. Compare it, if 

 you please, in practical importance, with the study of botany, which has become so 

 popular in our schools. Some idea of its importance may bo obtained from the state- 

 ment that careful computations, based upon the census returns of the .agricultural 

 products of the United States, show annual losses to these products of two hundred 

 millions of dollars, a large proportion of which are preventable. In interest, nothing in 

 the range of natural history can equal the study of the wonderfully varied habits of 

 insects and their marvelous transformations. As a mental discipline, it is fully equal to 

 the study of the classics, in its stimulation of the powers of observation, comp.arison, 

 discrimination, memory, while it tends to promote habits of study, industry, delicate 

 manipulation, order, neatness, and precision, which can not but prove of service in any 

 occupation or position in life. 



Have we the text-books for school instruction, such as are found in other bi-anches of 

 natural history — in botany, for example ? No, we have not; nor can we have, nor are 

 they needed. The synoptic tables and brief descriptions that would be required for the 

 identification of our United States species, with only twice the space devoted to an 

 insect that is given to a plant, would occupy, as I have computed, forty volumes of the 

 size of Gray's School and Field Book of Botany. But identification of species is not the 

 end of entomological study. With "Packard's Guide to the Study of Insects" in the hands 

 of the teacher, and with such assistance as would be suggested by it, he could soon pre- 

 pare himself to give better instruction than that usually obtained from text-books 

 alone. No branch offers such facilities for object-teaching. The objects are almost 

 innumerable — they cost nothing — they even come to you unsought- You could take one 

 hundred species of flies alone from your window-panes. Surely, there is no valid reason 

 for not introducing at once this study in oiir schools. 



Is it right, I would ask, in passing, and I use the word in its full import as antithetical 

 to wrong, that the 283 academies and academical departments in our State should be 

 able to report but fifty-one of their number as giving instruction in zoology — less than 

 one-fifth ? And yet this is the study that would teach of those wonderful organisms, 

 instinct with life and intelligence, associated with us upon a globe in which the adapta- 

 tions to their wants are as perfect as for our own, and each with a structure in which 

 God is revealed as unmistakably and as clearly as in the structure of the universe. 



