6 Annals Entomological Society of America [Vol. XIII, 



I can still very vividly recall the later years of the epoch of 

 which I have been speaking, and no doubt a few of my hearers 

 this evening, whose memories take them back to their early 

 days in school and college "before the war," can do as much. 

 As a boy I had become interested in the study of insects. The 

 only works upon the subject to which I had access at the time 

 were an original copy of . Say's "American Entomology," 

 Jaeger's "Life of North American Insects," and Boisduval and 

 Leconte's "Histoire Generale des Lepidopteres de I'Amerique 

 Septentrionale." These books were supplemented through the 

 kindness of an obliging congressman by the Annual Report of 

 the Smithsonian Institution for 1858, containing instructions 

 for the collection of insects, which I liked better than my cat- 

 echism, and subsequently by a copy of Morris' "Catalogue." 

 This was the sum of literature accessible to me. When I went 

 to college at Amherst it was with a feeling of eagerness, founded 

 upon a conviction that the doors of knowledge would at last be 

 opened to me. I had collected a multitude of specimens, many 

 hundreds of species in all orders. Imagine my despair when I 

 asked my most genial instructor, Professor Edward Hitchcock, 

 for assistance and guidance in determining my insects, to have 

 that hearty and bluff worthy say to me: "Holland, there is not 

 a man in Amherst who knows the first thing about insects." 

 Professor C. B. Adams, the great naturalist, who, I had been 

 told, had sometimes rocked me in my cradle in my West Indian 

 home, where he lived during his stay in Jamaica, was dead and 

 gone ; his Jamaican insects in the Appleton Cabinet had mostly 

 been devoured by Dermestes; I could do nothing, and therefore 

 promptly gave up entomology and devoted myself to chemistry, 

 geology, and botany, for teaching which there was more ample 

 provision made. It was not until years later that I came back 

 with vigor to the love of my boyhood. Blake, Cresson, Strecker, 

 Scudder, Leconte, Horn, Grote, Henshaw, and many others were 

 hard at work at that time, but I knew it not. I came to know 

 them all in later years. But at that time there was no one to 

 guide me. There was no army of entomological enthusiasts such 

 as is found in our society with its membership of hundreds. The 

 science had few votaries. They lived apart; their work had 

 barely begun to see the light; and I knew them not. 



We now come to the second epoch. On March 12, 1861, the 

 Entomological Society of Philadelphia was constituted, being 



