26 BiiUetin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society Vol. XII 



ing big stones and this ivithout pay, does seem hard to believe, I 

 admit it. For these questioners know nothing of our real earn- 

 ings, our full reward for all pains and exertions. The question 

 most often asked, in one form or another, is zvhy we do these 

 things. And it is so hard to explain that why in a way they can 

 comprehend. Often I find, after I have made what I think is a 

 plain, lucid explanation of an entomologist's aim, that I have 

 utterly failed to give the listener the faintest idea of it all. 



" How many insects have you at home yourself ? " asked a 

 sweet faced old lady who joined me one day on a wooded road 

 in Vermont. And when I told her there were thousands in my 

 collection she exclaimed — " How do you ever feed them all ? " 

 And I found she thought they were all kept alive as pets or com- 

 panions. Yet she herself was of more than ordinary intelligence 

 and knew so many, many things I had no knowledge of. For 

 she told me in what year the first missionary was sent to Africa 

 and added many details as to his own and later missionaries' work 

 and success. She talked of the different religious denominations 

 in Vermont and had statistics concerning the comparative num- 

 bers of Baptists, Methodists and Congregationalists at her 

 tongue's end. And she was fully as ardent and enthusiastic in 

 this field as I in my small sphere of interest. Surely, as St. Paul 

 says, "There are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit." I am 

 often asked, in my wanderings, if I am employed by government 

 to do this thing. At a summer resort, where I have been year 

 after year of late, I find it is generally thought by the waiters 

 and other employes of the hotel that I am in the employ of the 

 state government, with a large salary. In vain I deny this — they 

 only think I am guarding a state secret. A very intelligent 

 woman in the south, after watching me night after night captur- 

 ing moths at the electric lights, said to me very courteously, " I 

 think now I understand your purpose in this. You are trying to 

 see if you can find two of these night-flyers exactly alike. It is 

 like trying, as I used when a child, to match two leaves of ribbon- 

 grass." I afterwards learned that the woman was a teacher. I 

 hope she does not conduct a nature course. In my frequent visits 

 to Mt. Washington and my long sojourns on the summit I heard 

 more strange and uncomplimentary comments upon myself and 



