PROCEEDINGS, 1921 7 



members for reference. There is also the obvious risk of fire. Recently, 

 hoAvever. an offer has come from the Provincial Library to house the 

 Ijooks there. I have been assured by the librarian that not only will 

 the books be catalogued and cared for as they should be. but the library 

 will undertake to issue them to members at a distance in conformity 

 with the rules of the Society. I understand that the Natural History 

 Society is making the same arrangement with regard to their library. 

 I commend this plan to you as a most desirable one, and suggest that 

 the Society give the oft'er of the Provincial Library their consideration 

 and approval. 



W. DOWNES, Hon. Secretary-Treasurer. 



PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 1921 



By E. H. Blackmore, F.E.S. • 



Gentlemen. — I did not intend to inflict an address upon you at this 

 meeting, but being the twentieth anniversary of the founding of our 

 Society, it is perhaps appropriate that I should say a few words on the 

 progress of entomology in the Province during the last few years. As 

 our worthy Vice-President, Mr. R. C. Treherne, is giving a review of 

 economic entomology in B. C. during the same period, I will confine 

 myself to the systematic side. 



Mr. G. O. Day, in his presidential address in January, 1914, gave a 

 rather comprehensive account of the work of the earlier entomologists 

 in B. C, and also of the activities of the Society from its inception up 

 to the end of the year 1913. His very interesting address is printed in 

 full in No. 4 of our Proceedings, and it is an address that is well worth 

 reading a second time, as it contains much valuable information, and 

 I would like to recommend its perusal to our more recent members. 

 I will take up, in as brief a manner as possible, the progress of systematic 

 entomology since that date to the present time, including the part that 

 the Society, through its active members, has played during that period. 

 Before doing so, however, I would like to add a few remarks on the 

 earlier days of entomology in B. C. which were not included in Mr. 

 Day's paper. 



The first scientific collector of insects on Vancouver Island of which 

 we have any authentic record was a Mr. G. R. Crotch, who collected in 

 the vicinity of Victoria in the month of Jul}', 1871, some fifty years ago. 

 After leaving Victoria Mr. Crotch went to California, where he collected 

 extensively for the Museum of Comparative Zoology, at which institu- 

 tion many of his Vancouver Island captures are still to be seen. In 

 1876 Adolpheus S. Packard published his "Monograph of the Geomet- 

 ridae of North America," in which he described as new many of the 

 species that were taken by Mr. Crotch at Victoria, so that Victoria and 



