48 Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society Vol. IX 



the preparation and preservation of insects. In those days we had 

 no knowledge of cyanide bottles, chloroform, or carbon bisulphide 

 for preservation. We had to use methods of killing which, much 

 to my subsequent regret, not only hampered our work but were 

 highly repugnant to us on account of their cruelty. Equipped 

 with the usual outfit of nets, cigar boxes, pill boxes and pins, we 

 resorted as often as possible to the suburbs of the then relatively 

 small city oi Brooklyn. One favorite collecting spot was a vege- 

 table garden, where now is the junction of Flatbush Ave. and Ful- 

 ton St. Fort Greene Hill, now Washington Park, was another 

 nice wild place. Then, there was the meadow, or sheep pasture, 

 now part of Prospect Park, at that time often devoted to pigeon 

 shooting. Occasionally we took long trips to East New York, 

 Bay Ridge and Parkville, as well as the many intervening unpopu- 

 lated localities. Grote lived with his parents at New Dorp, Staten 

 Island, where during the summer, he bred many specimens of 

 Lepidoptera and gained considerable knowledge thereby of their 

 earlier stages. I often accompanied him home and passed much 

 time at his house. A keen rivalry arose between the three of us, 

 but later Grote and I decided to form a joint collection. To 

 guard against dispute we marked our respective specimens with 

 our initials, A. and E., as our family names began with the same 

 letter. This arrangement was however, of brief duration, as a 

 violent quarrel ensued, resulting in a division of specimens and 

 reestablishment of separate collections. We soon became recon- 

 ciled and the trio devoted ourselves assiduously to collecting until 

 we had very considerable numbers stored away in the customary 

 cigar boxes. We attempted to arrange them according to some 

 system, but were greatly handicapped by inability to get identifi- 

 cations of our material. The only collection to which we had 

 access was insignificant and sadly out of repair in the then so-called 

 Graham Institute on Washington St., the site of which is now 

 occupied by the approach to the Brooklyn Bridge. This institu- 

 tion was the nucleus of the present Brooklyn Institute of Arts & 

 Sciences. In its small library the only work on entomology was 

 " Insects of New York " by Dr. E. Emmons, being vol. 5 the 

 Agriculture of New York, issued in 1854. The information in 

 this was entirely too limited for our requirements, as we had many 



