316 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURXAL 



problems of evolution and distribution on the one hand and to economic and 

 medical science on the other. Its actual importance is undoubtedly under- 

 estimated even by generally well-informed people. The damage wrought 

 by domestic insects, by those of the garden, by those of the forest and the 

 farm, as well as by the insect carriers of disease, is enormous. Already the 

 collections of insects in the American IVIuseum aggregate more than one 

 million specimens, the care of which it may be parenthetically mentioned 

 devolves upon four persons. The foundation for future work necessarily 

 rests on stable, established nomenclature, which involves a wearisome study 

 of descriptions and comparison of specimens, and this is what the Local Col- 

 lection is designed to facilitate. The superstructure involves the study of 

 the relation of insects to their environment. It is in this respect that the 

 cooperation between the scientific staff of the Museum and the members of 

 the Society has already brought forth the most gratifying results. The 

 Journal of the Society was once largely filled with contributions from out- 

 siders; it is now difficult to find space for all the articles contributed by 

 members of the Society. The minutes of the Society a few years ago record 

 interesting captures, exchanges and taxonomic characters, those of to-day 

 the habits of the larvte, the distribution of insects in time and space, and dis- 

 cussion from an entomological point of view of the most intricate points of 

 science. The association of the practical entomologists of the Society with 

 the trained scientific staff of the Museum has taught the entomologists to 

 group and to present their facts more logically and see their chosen science 

 from new points of view, while to that staff the importance of entomology 

 may have become more evident. 



Such are some of the results of cooperation of the Museum with a scien- 

 tific society in four short years. What will be the results in twenty years? 

 Is it too much to anticipate on the one hand, the accumulation in the Ameri- 

 can Museum of the greatest collection in the world, better arranged, better 

 named, more useful to science than was ever known elsewhere; and on the 

 other hand the growth of the New York Entomological Society, with the 

 library, collections, field work and scientific staff of the Museum at its 

 service, into the greatest of all entomological societies, surpassing in its 

 usefulness anything heretofore conceived, and embracing in its scope every 

 department of entomology? The writer believes that the beneficial results 

 of cooperation are already too plain to doubt its value, even if the consum- 

 mation that we hope for may not thus be speedily attained. 



