54 PROTECTION OF PLANTS. 1916-17 



HISTORICAL NOTES ON ENTOMOLOGY IN THE 

 PROVINCE OF QUEBEC 



Canon V. A. Huard, D.Sc, Curator, Museum of Public Instruction, 



Quebec. 



Although our Province of Quebec is considered in certain quarters 

 to be behindhand, it has nevertheless led the way in Canada in many pur- 

 suits of an intellectual and artistic nature. It still stands at the head in 

 the realm of art, literature, science, philosophy and theology, and it is of 

 this pioneer work in one particular branch of science, entomology, that 

 I wish to speak. 



Neither in the Province of Quebec nor elsewhere in Canada can we trace 

 the history of entomology back into the "dark ages." There is no trace of 

 any entomologist among the great thinkers who made illustrious the ages of 

 Pericles, Augustus and Louis XIV; neither Jacques Cartier nor Champlain 

 numbered an entomologist among his followers, the reason being that 

 entomology at that time had not come to be recognized under the title of 

 a special study. Our worthy ancestors may have taken up the raising of 

 silkworms, bees and cochineal for industrial purposes, but for the rest they 

 limited themselves to measures of defence against such personal enemies as 

 flies, mosquitoes, etc., and it was not until the eighteenth century that 

 Linnaeus took up the scientific study of the insect world. 



In America entomology has onh' reached the age of half a century; it is 

 not even so old as this if one speaks of its "official" existence so far as it has 

 been publicly known and encouraged. For a long time it only existed as a 

 special study which was taken up privately by a few people. 



In the Province of Quebec, with which I wish to deal more particularly, 

 the first name to be recalled in the historj' of entomology is that of William 

 Cooper, who lived in several of our larger towns towards the middle of last 

 century. He appears to have been the first man in Quebec to make a 

 collection of insects, and his name is connected with the discovery of several 

 new species of Lepidoptera and Coleoptera. He was probably the first to 

 make a study of the insects of Labrador and the Island of Anticosti. He 

 contributed articles to the Canadian Entomologist and to the Canadian 

 Naturalist of Montreal. 



