, 580 BULLETIN UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. [Tol. Yl. 



more remarkable, or Thoreau by Waiden Pond. Thoreau and liis 

 school stood outside of Evolution, and the Derivative philosophy of na- 

 ture; and it surprises one that it should have been so. With his knowl- 

 edge of the classics, it is strange that Thoreau overlooked Democritus 

 and Lucretius. The facts all ran before his eyes, and he took them up 

 singly, as the bit of sky on the blue-bird's back ; but he went no further 

 with his discovery. The jSTew England blue-bird, or its Mayilower bloom, 

 stood in relation with some fact that was true by the banks of the Ganges, 

 for Thoreau. He fitted them into some eternities reflected from the 

 Bhagvat-Glieeta; meauwliile they were fading with the season and fight- 

 ing the struggle for existence in the Concord woods. JSTature has to be 

 studied from small point to small point. Thus are tlie fine chains of 

 reasoning made, which, presently, some one will cast over the Eockj" 

 Mountains and bring down a land-slide of results — so much of the world 

 captured. Thoreau threw aside all his weapons and refused this world's 

 fight. He was a poet of jSTature because he did not understand Nature ; 

 she was perpetually strange to him. Matter was the miracle for Tho- 

 reau; Mind the everyday affair. He was satisfied when his thoughts 

 liad untied themselves and fled from the matter which ga^•e them birth. 

 He admired their tenuous appearance, far off and disap])eariug, follow- 

 ing the doves behind the clouds. But meanwhile ]3r. Harris was find- 

 ing the curious larv;« with hoinlike ridges on the thorax, which were 

 feeding on the elm trees oi' the (3ommon. He knew that this was a re- 

 markable variation of the usually smooth Spliingid larval foim, some- 

 thing ^'not in the books." He called the insect Ceratomia, and imt it 

 in the books, where it must stay for future generations to stmiy over. 

 This is some of the ])hiIosophy of facts that must be pursued to discover 

 the succession in place and time. Thoreau stood aloof from it: by so 

 much superior to the eternal procession, and yet by so nuich the loser 

 and out of sympathy with humanity and the direction where its inquiry 

 and progress were to lie. 



By a good maiiy threads of thought Entomology attaches itself to 

 genera,! literature. I remember reading in Dr. Fitch's " Eeports," 

 his speculation that the '"great caterpillar" of Indian tradition, sung 

 of by Longfellow in '• Hiawatha," was that of Uuprcpia amencana, an 

 insect now thought to be identi(;al with the European Coju. But the 

 description does not fit that species nearly as well as it does the black, 

 hairy caterpillar, with its deep scarlet rings, of Ecpanilierla Hcnbonia. 

 This is commonly found in the spring, pupating beneath logs and stones 

 in May and June. If, indeed, we are to take the name literally, the 

 strictly American genus Ec panther ia seems more a])i)ropriately to be 

 noted; and, as its larva is, probably, the handsomest and most striking 

 of its group, it woidd not unlikely catch the eye of the Indians. 



I can fancy how long Entomologists will be glad that Dr. Harris lived, 

 as I have every day since I knew it. It is not only Ins excellent English, 

 his staid, untiipx)ant style, that makes his " Eepoit" so readable. It is 



