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<i;rouncl. It teaches him to crush the e\il in the cradle or the 

 e;^g'. It puts it in his power to pit one enemy against another, 

 fighting fire with fire. It hangs upon some slender thread of 

 habit in the movements of a depredator the foil to his attack. 

 Some of the classics of science, like the well known volume of 

 Dr. Harris here in Massachusetts, have been written in the in- 

 terests of agricultural success. 



Endowments from a state or nation to promote such studies, — 

 the work of individual investigators or agricultural departments, 

 — are all liable to a double misapprehension. Upon one side it 

 seems so absurd to pension Entomology ! a science which may 

 be fascinating to a few har;nless zealots, with net in hand to cap- 

 ture, and Latin and Greek lexicons within reach to name, their 

 victims ; but which even more than any other pursuit impairs the 

 popular respect for a person's sanity. It is so easy to ridicule 

 such things, and wail for money wasted on this sand. It is not 

 here alone that men are blind to the enlargements of their own 

 interests. Within the last dozen years, a prominent member of 

 our American Congress, mentioned more than once for the high- 

 est office in the people's gift, labored in his place to oppose our 

 national Coast-Survey — because he was a western representative 

 and Illinois and Minnesota were out of hearing of Atlantic 

 waves. As if the great west had any other highway for the ex- 

 portation of her products than the sea, whose gates were watch- 

 ed and guarded by the very instution which he scorned ! Mean- 

 while the grasshopper devours a dozen agricultural departments 

 every month, and the beetle asserts the honor of the striped uni- 

 form by spreading terror from Colorado to Massachusetts. Sure- 

 ly science is worth a larger endowment than she has ever dared 

 to beg, if she can help us here. 



Another misconception comes from the old impatience of the 

 world at the tardiness of results. To borrow a figure of a vig- 

 orous writer, we are too fond of digging up our hopes to see if 



