ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 



Philadelphia, Pa., April, 1916. 



How many languages must an Entomologist know? 



It would seem to one who lays no claims to successful pre- 

 diction or seership that the present European conflict will re- 

 tard progress toward internationalism, cosmopolitanism, the 

 adoption of a universal language, the Parliament of Man. It 

 will continue the effects alleged to have been caused when the 

 Tower of Babel was checked in its upward growth apd will in- 

 tensify the use of its peculiar tongue by each of the many tribes 

 inhabiting this terrestrial ball. We were never especially at- 

 tracted by Esperanto and similar artificial dialects and evident- 

 ly entomologists must make up their minds that they must, 

 individually or by proxy, enlarge their acquaintance with Euro- 

 pean and Asiatic languages. We are moved to these reflections 

 by the recent receipt of an installment of a large and ambitious 

 monograph on the Odonata of Russia and neighboring coun- 

 tries, whose scope, in spite of the title, appears to be wide 

 enough to include the description of a new species from Ohio 

 in six lines of Latin and forty-four lines of Russian, follow- 

 ed by twenty-one lines of comparative notes, also in Russian. 

 To be sure there are two figures of details, but 



We blame neither the Russians nor the Japanese for using 

 their own vernaculars ; we do the same. But the languages of 

 science are a heavy burden to us whose memories balk at the 

 acquisition of words utterly unlike those of western Europe in 



form and spelling. 



1 <»» I 



A Dipterous Larva Parasitic in Earthworms. 



At the meeting of the Biological Society of Washington, Dec. 4, 

 191 5, Dr. L. O. Howard called attention to the cluster-fly (Pollenia 

 rudis), an insect resembling the house-fly but collecting in houses in 

 autumn and leaving a yellow stain when crushed. Its life history was 

 unknown until recently a foreign entomologist has shown that the 

 larvae are parasitic in earthworms in France. Dr. Howard is having 

 large numbers of earthworms examined for such larvae, but so far 

 without success. He hoped that anyone finding any grub parasitic in 

 earthworms would communicate with him. (Science, March 3, 1916, 

 P- 330). 



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