1911] Field — Doctor Scudclers Work on the Lepidoptera 179 



DOCTOR SCUDDER'S WORK ON THE LEPIDOPTERA. 



By William L. W. Field, 

 Milton, Mass. 



Doctor Scudder's monumental work on "The Butterflies of the 

 Eastern United States and Canada" was the culmination of more 

 than thirty years of research in the life-histories and affinities of 

 the higher Lepidoptera. After its publication, in 1889, his atten- 

 tion was largely given to the study of fossil insects and of Orthop- 

 tera, though he nevertheless found time for the preparation of 

 several books designed to cultivate popular interest in the butter- 

 ffies. Lideed he had in nund the publication of a book of wide 

 scope, — a manual of the butterflies of North America. Great 

 would have been the gain to the science of entomology had he 

 lived to carry out his plan. 



Few writers upon the Lepidoptera have approached him in 

 philosophic breadth of view, in felicity of expression, in taxonomic 

 precision. Perhaps no other has possessed these qualities in such 

 wonderful combination. The spirit of Louis Agassiz, whose pupil 

 and assistant he had been, is in his systematic work — the spirit 

 which lays deep and sure foundations for the generalizations that 

 are to come. "Facts are stupid things," he quotes his great 

 teacher as saying, "until they are brought under some general 

 law"; but he himself shows, all unconsciously, that the scientist's 

 prevision of the light that will illuminate his facts invokes a lustre 

 from the facts themselves. Comparisons of structural details 

 in closely-allied insects are apt to make dull reading; but those 

 from his pen have something which redeems and individualizes. 

 We see, beyond the printed page, the ever-fresh zeal of the 

 investigator. 



And into the generalizations enters a new spirit — that of Charles 

 Darwin. Doctor Scudder's essays upon migration, geographical 

 distribution, protective coloration, dimorphism, and other evolu- 

 tionary aspects of butterfly life, pointed the way to broad fields 

 for research among our native species. These essays, most of 

 them placed as "excursi" between the accounts of different 

 families and genera in his great monograph, are perhaps the most 



