Vol. Xxii] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 435 



active part in the establishment of the Philadelphia city flag; 

 to participate in political reform and philanthropic movements ; 

 to design the seal of the Presbyterian Church in America, and 

 to make researches into the early history of the denomination ; 

 to write theological essays like The Gospel of Nature and 

 Ecclesiastical Emblems, romances as The Latimer s and Quaker 

 Ben, poems, and The Senator — A Threnody in Verse and Prose 

 (for Senator Hanna). 



From this rapid sketch of his principal activities — and Dr. 

 McCook was first and chiefly a clergyman — it will be realized 

 that his entomological interests were secondary in his life. He 

 devoted himself in this latter field to the habits and taxonomy 

 of spiders and the habits of ants. His studies on spiders ap- 

 pear to have begun about 1873, to judge from expressions in 

 the prefaces to his American Spiders and their Spinning Work. 

 Professor Wheeler, in his recent comprehensive volume on 

 Ants, cites twenty-one books and papers on these insects from 

 Dr. McCook's pen between 1876 and 1907, and at least one more 

 title of later date must be added to this list. Dr. McCook's 

 .entomological work, therefore, commenced after his settle- 

 ment in Philadelphia, and his technical papers on both spiders 

 and ants appeared for the most part in the Proceedings of the 

 Academy of Natural Sciences and in the Transactions of the 

 American Entomological Society. Dr. McCook became a mem- 

 ber of the Academy in 1875, ^"d served as one of its two vice- 

 presidents, from May 23, 1882, to December, 1900. The other 

 vice-president, for much of the same period, was the botanist, 

 Thomas Meehan, and among other active scientific members 

 were Leidy, Cope, Horn. Gibbons Hunt, Heilprin, Harrison 

 Allen and Ryder. 



Dr. McCook entered the American Entomological Society in 

 1877 ; was vice-president from 1884 to 1893, and president from 

 1898 to 1900. His last appearance at an entomological gath- 

 ering was probably at the meeting, held in the rooms of the 

 Society and Entomological Section of the Academy, on De- 

 cember 29, 1904, at the occasion of the meeting of the Ameri- 

 can Association for the Advancement of Science. 



