114 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [May 



REFLECTIONS ON THE REALIZATION OF ONE OF BOY- 

 HOOD'S DREAMS. 



By Prof. A. J. Snyder, Belvidere, 111. 



[Not intended for those who live within the magic circles 

 whose boundaries circumscribe the cities of Boston, Philadel- 

 phia, !New York, Reading, Pittsburg, Il'I'ewark, nor for the in- 

 habitants of any other city which is the proud possessor of an 

 Entomological Society, are these lines written ; but for the 

 poor, isolated '' bugologist " who lives one thousand miles from 

 ''nowhere," who seldom meets a congenial spirit, but who is 

 considered an irredeemable crank, even by his relatives, and 

 who must send all his vara aves within the charmed circle in 

 order that they may be properly christened ; to you, fellow- 

 creatures in lonesomeness, who frequently write me about how 

 your n. sp. have been annexed while in pursuit of cognomens, 

 this epistle is inscribed.] 



My first thought concerning these remarks was to label them 

 ^' Post Mortem Examinations," for they are based on the fact 

 that the past summer found me in the East examining the re- 

 mains, ''legs, thoraxes, abdomens," etc., of all those insects 

 which you poor collectors have been sending there for years and 

 about which at least semi-annually a wail goes up from the 

 editorial page of entomological journals. You remember how 

 we are instructed to always ' ' pin firmly, pack in one box 

 which is enclosed in another, all around which must be several 

 inches of springy packing material, the whole branded on each 

 of its six faces. " Fragile ! ! With Care ! ! ! " etc. It is useless 

 to extenuate — you know how they ought to be packed, or at least 

 you should know ; but really, brethren, now that, like Caesar, 

 I may say, " Veni, vidi,^^ the greatest marvel of the age is how 

 those Eastern collectors can so skillfully patch up specimens ; 

 for, within the magic circle, I actually saw (believe it, if you 

 can) whole drawers full of butterflies without a single antler 

 missing ; and, name it not in Gath, but some of those butter- 

 flies met their death at our hands. I know it, for occasionally 

 some of them still bear our labels. 



Probably every boy who inclines to scientific pursuits 

 dreams of some day visiting the Smithsonian and the National 

 Museum ; and if, as in my case, his dream is not realized until 



