4 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
and treatment in health and disease of all farm stock. All of the above 
work comes under the head of scientific agriculture—provided that it is 
done accurately—and is of incalculable value to the country at large. In 
no branch of natural science, however, I believe, have such important 
results been obtained, when gauged by their effect upon the revenue of 
the country, as in that branch of zoology which treats of insects and 
their depredations on the crops of the orchard, the garden, and the farm. 


HISTORICAL. 
Practical or economic entomology may still be described as a new 
study, and in no part of the world can it be said to have been developed with 
such marked good results as in North America, where the work was only 
begun in 1841 by the publication of Dr. T. W. Harris's classical report on 
the injurious insects of Massachusetts. This remarkable building up in 
America of a new and more important branch of an old science, has been 
mainly due to the great knowledge and special abilities of Prof. C. V. 
Riley, for many years United States Entomologist at Washington, and 
his very able successor, Mr. L. O. Howard. A history of the science 
of entomology would probably be of interest, but would be out of place 
here. A few landmarks, however, may be pointed out. There is an 
excellent concise history of the progress of entomology by Mr. S. J. Capper 
in his presidential address to the Lancashire and Cheshire Entomological 
Society, 1892. He says : “ The most ancient references to Entomology are 
in the works of the great Aristotle, who was born in Greece, B.C. 384. 
Pliny the Elder, who died A.D. 79, wrote many treatises on Natural 
History in which references to bees and other insects occur. It was not 
till the 16th and 17th centuries that much attention was paid to the 
lives and habits of insects, when the ‘ Theatrum Insectorum’ of Thomas 
Muffet was published at London, A.D. 1634. This was the first work 
ever issued as a separate volume on all orders of insects, and was a most 
careful work, referring to everything that had ever appeared upon ento- 
mological matters up to that time. More advance took place in the 17th 
century, John Ray and Francis Willughby being important figures. But 
the popular value placed on the study of insects at that day may be shown 
from the fact that the will of Lady Glanville was disputed on the ground 
of insanity because she was known to collect and study insects. Moses 
Harris in his ‘ Aurelian, published in 1779, says ‘The Fly Melitea 
Cinzia, the Glanville Fritillary, took its name from the ingenious Lady 
Glanville whose memory had like to have suffered from her curiosity ? 
Some relations that were disappointed by her will, attempted to set it 
aside by acts of lunacy, for they suggested that none but those who were 
deprived of their senses would go in pursuit of butterflies. Her relations 
and legatees subpænaed Dr. Sloan, the founder of the British Museum, 
