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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 831 



Agassiz's training, to place entomology in 

 America on a footing so that tlie subject 

 could be competently studied and taught. 

 The influence of Louis Agassiz in fact, per- 

 haps even more than is generally realized, 

 was enormous in the development of in- 

 terest in natural history in America, and 

 entomology no less than the other branches 

 of the subject felt its stimulating effect. 

 Moreover, the Smithsonian Institution in 

 those older days under Joseph Henry did 

 much by the publication in its ' ' Miscellane- 

 ous Collections" of the works of Morris, 

 Osten Sacken, Loew and Le Conte to help 

 the labors of the earlier group of workers. 

 So we find the elder Fernald beginning 

 to teach entomology at the Maine State 

 College in 1872, and a year later J. H. 

 Comstock began to teach it at Cornell. 

 Fernald, however, was professor of nat- 

 ural history and he had to teach all sorts 

 of things, while Comstock was confined 

 to entomology and invertebrate zoology. 

 Thus, while Fernald was one of the early 

 teachers of entomology, Hagen was really 

 the first professor of this subject with Com- 

 stock as second. But it is not my plan to 

 discuss precedence in this direction. I 

 wish to show how recent are the beginnings 

 of the study and how rapidly it has ad- 

 vanced. As it happens, I was Comstock 's 

 first student, and we began to work to- 

 gether in a little cramped room in the 

 autumn of 1873, with little material, few 

 books and a poor microscope for our equip- 

 ment. At the Agassiz Museum, Hagen 

 had his excellent library and good collec- 

 tion, and he had Crotch and Schwarz and 

 Hubbard and, a little later, Samuel Hen- 

 shaw working with him. Fernald was 

 working single-handed off in Maine. A 

 few economic entomologists were busy — 

 Fitch in New York, Riley in Missouri, Le 

 Baron in Illinois and Glover in Washing- 

 ton. The systematic workers and those 



who studied the habits of insects were more 

 numerous — Le Conte, Horn, Osten Sacken, 

 Lintner, V. T. Chambers, E. T. Cresson, 

 S. H. Scudder, W. H. Edwards and his 

 colleague T. L. Mead, Henry Edwards, 

 A. R. Grote and his colleague Coleman T. 

 Robinson, P. R. Uhler, H. F. Bassett, R. 

 H. Stretch, P. G. Sanborn, S. S. Rathvon, 

 Cyrus Thomas, H. C. McCook, G. R. 

 Crotch, H. Behr, C. Zimmerman, George 

 Dimmock, C. S. Minot, P. S. Sprague, P. 

 Blanehard, C. A. Blake, Edward Norton, 

 H. Shimer, T. Meehan, E. D. Cope, E. P. 

 Austin, J. Behrens, J. H. Ridings, A. J. 

 Cook, W. V. Andrews, Edward Burgess, 

 L. P. Harvey, P. H. Snow, G. Linceeum, 

 J. H. Emerton, Mary E. Murtfeldt, G. M. 

 Dodge, C. R. Dodge, Thomas G. Gentry, 

 H. K. Morrison, A. S. Puller, E. L. Graef, 

 and, across the border in Canada, Abbe 

 Provancher, William Saunders, Rev. C. J. 

 S. Bethune, William Couper and E. Baynes 

 Reed were about all. 



And it must be remembered that nearly 

 all of these men had had no training and 

 were scientifically untaught; nearly all 

 were engaged in professions or in business, 

 and that entomology was but a side issue 

 and not the sole interest of their lives — in 

 fact, with many of them it was simply an 

 amusement, a fad. But I do not intend to 

 detract from the value of their work. They 

 and their few predecessors laid a strong 

 systematic foundation for the work which 

 has been done since, and for that which is 

 still to come. It should be pointed out, 

 however, that, systematically speaking, 

 whole groups of the North American ento- 

 mological complex were unknown. The 

 Coleoptera and Lepidoptera and certain 

 families in the Diptera and Hymenoptera 

 had been studied by these men, but a field 

 of unknown greatness remained unex- 

 plored. 



Something must be said also of the influ- 



