June, 1916 Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society 51 



despise me if he knew I have not an idea what coleoptera is. I 

 only write things." Many hobby-riders who also " write things " 

 have had similar experiences. 



Entomology and literature work well together in harness, each 



being a good " running mate " for the other. Some authors are 



troubled to find names for their stories, titles for their books. 



An entomologist need never be at a loss in the matter. Let him 



take a volume at random from the shelf which holds his bound 



magazines. He will find it bristling with suggestions, scintillating 



with bright hints. Ah, the stories I have wanted to write as I 



looked over the index of some one of our journals. What an 



epic I might write on " The Song of Thyreonotus " from an old 



magazine; it is a whole Greek tragedy in itself. I wrote — 



mentally and with not a pen in sight — a weird tale with the title 



stolen from the Canadian Entomologist, "Aberrations of 



Vanessa." She had many idiosyncrasies, this Vanessa, heroine 



of my psychological story, still unwritten. " The Coulee Cricket " 



suggested an irrepressible cowboy bearing that nickname because 



of his nimble escapes from dangers such as prisons, police and 



such. " The Capture of Monodontomerus " is a taking title for 



an Indian romance. " Cannibalistic Tendencies of Certain 



Females" suggests a tale of lady vampires or ghouls, and "A 



Flight of Water Boatmen " is not a bad name for a sea story. 



These things show, I think, how entomology may help the literary 



man. As to the reverse, how^ a literary touch adds to the charm 



of entomological writings, need I try to prove it? Several of the 



writers for this and for our other journals make of their papers 



concerning dry, technical subjects, delightful essays, real idyls. 



Some of our fellow naturalists in Canada write such papers, 



published in the annual report of their society, and I read them 



with great pleasure enjoying them as I do the essays of Thoreau, 



Burroughs, Muir and Bradford Torrey. A certain orthopterist 



in a New England town often gives a delightful literary touch to 



his scientific descriptions, making the reader see sporting elves, 



fairies or brownies, in green or wood color, instead of leaping 



insects with their polysyllabic titles. 



In an article published in Psyche more than twenty years ago 

 on the orthoptera of certain islands off the Massachusetts coast 



