92 THE LEPIDOPTERIST 



The Work of W. H. Edwards 



We must all recognize W. H. Edwards as the 

 greatest butterfly student which this country has ever 

 produced or probably ever will. He described a good 

 majority of our species; but his work on the life- 

 histories was greater yet. The key to his great success 

 in these two lines was his numerous correspondents 

 in every part of the country to which he exhibited the 

 greatest unselfishness in help and encouragement. He 

 was really a great teacher, and I believe in that way 

 his life work was greater than in his descriptive or 

 life-history work. His correspondents were not mere 

 collectors but were students as well, who observed, 

 thought and wrote. Look at the co-operation in the 

 Butterflies of North America. Here are some : Hy. 

 Edwards, Behrens, Mead, Wright, Rivers, Bruce, 

 Wittfield, Geddes, Fletcher, Behr, Stretch, Morrison, 

 Baron and others. It was surely a great inspiration 

 to work under such a great man and teacher as W. H. 

 Edwards. 



Edwards took a trip to the Amazon river in Brazil, 

 before he took up the study of the American butter- 

 flies, and on his return he wrote a book of his travels 

 there. The reading of this book by Wallace and Bates 

 decided them to go to the iVmazon country together. 

 So he had a direct connection with the development 

 of the evolutionary idea. Later W. H. Edwards con- 

 tributed largely to the evolutionary theory in his work 

 on temperature effects on butterflies. The many sided- 

 ness and the greatness of our great butterfly student 

 has hardly, 1 believe, yet been brought home to us. 

 He was a poet also. And he wrote a genealogy of the 

 Edwards family. 



The three volumes of "The Butterflies of North 

 America" rank with Audubon's "Birds of America" 

 as a classic in natural history and it will probably 

 never be exceeded in quality, scientific value, or in- 

 terest. 



F. Gkinnell, Jr. 



