198 



THE AMERICAN 



and agricultural journals. Return home in a 

 hurry, pitch the printed journals into the basket, 

 to be examined when I have a little leisure, and 

 answer per mail the four letters that require 

 immediate attention. Luckily the insects sent 

 with these four letters are all common species, 

 and perfectly familiar to me; and, as I know 

 them " like a book," it does not take me long 

 to write my four letters. 



12:30 p. M. — After dinner, and while I am 

 luxuriating in a fragrant Havana, revise the 

 proof-sheets. Find but very little indeed to 

 correct. Have had proof-sheets from a dozen 

 different printing offices in America, and from 

 twice that number in England, and never yet 

 met with such "clean" proofs as Messrs. Studley 

 & Co. turn out from their magnificent estab- 

 lishment. Open the two letters, enclosing 

 specimens of bugs, and requiring to be answered 

 in the Entomologist. One of them is all plain 

 sailing, as the insects are well known to me, 

 and are properly packed with some cotton wool 

 ina little stout pasteboard box. The other coi-- 

 I'espondent has enclosed his specimens loose in 

 his letter, and being soft, fleshy larv£e they are 

 squashed into a most promiscuous mass. Puzzle 

 a long time over the head, which is the only 

 recognizable part. Conclude that it probably 

 belongs to some one or other out of fifteen dis- 

 tinct larvae. Puzzle again for half an hour 

 longer to guess which larva of the fifteen is the 

 one that has been sent me. Alas! I am no 

 Yankee, and have finally to give the job up in 

 despair. Write the appropriate "Answers to 

 Correspondents," and fully expect to be "cussed" 

 considerably by one of them, because I cannot 

 distinguish every one of the thirty thousand 

 species of insects that exist in the United States 

 by a fragmentary specimen of its head. 



4 p. M. — Go into my garden to examine the 

 results of several experiments that I am trying 

 as to the efiicacy of diflerent chemical prepara- 

 tions upon several different noxious insects. 

 Return and record the results, so far as they 

 appear up to this day, in my journal. "Walk out 

 with my fly-net, and capture two males and one 

 female of a rare insect, which is comparatively 

 common here, and of which I have promised to 

 send specimens to an Eastern correspondent, in 

 return for his kind assistance in making extracts 

 for my use from scarce and expensive Entomo- 

 logical works, which at present are only to be 

 found in the great scientific libraries in the 

 Eastern cities. Heigho! I wonder if we shall 

 ever get a public library in the West that is 

 decently supplied with standard works on 

 Natural History. I wish I was a rich man; 



would not I then send an order forthwith to 

 Europe for $10,000 worth of Entomological 

 books! 



6:30 p. M. — Have just returned from the post- 

 ofiice and swallowed my supper. I have received 

 two more letters on the great Bug question, 

 that requiie immediate attention; and a long 

 and most interesting letter from an entomo- 

 logical correspondent in Europe. Run my eye 

 over the last, and find my modesty terribly 

 shocked by his telling me that the Entomologist 

 is highly appreciated among scientific men on 

 the other side of the Atlantic. Answer the 

 other two letters, one of which contains some 

 new and most important facts about a certain 

 noxious insect, which throw great light upon a 

 point in its history that has hitherto been wrap- 

 ped in obscurity. What an accurate observer 

 that last correspondent of mine is ! I would 

 just as soon trust his eyes — as to the operations 

 of any particular bug — as I would my own ! 

 But then, of course. I know the correct names 

 of the dift'erent bugs better than he does. If I 

 had but one hundred such correspoudunts, they 

 would be as useful to me in my scientific in- 

 vestigations as fifty pairs of additional eyes! 

 And yet this man is nothing but an intelligent 

 fruit-grower, with good, strong common sense, 

 and that most invaluable habit of never seeing 

 anything until he does actually see it. 



8 p. M. — Having now discharged the duties of 

 the day, I am just about to sit down to prose- 

 cute some further investigations into the correct 

 name and classification of that bug that bothered 

 me so much in the morning, when 1 hear a tre- 

 mendous fluttering in one of uiy breeding-cages. 

 Lo and behold! There are two large moths 

 come out that I did not expect to make their 

 appearance for a week or two. Chloroform 

 them to stop their fluttering; and, after killing 

 them and stuffing their abdomens with cotton, 

 set out their wings on the little space that re- 

 mains in the tray that I cleared in the morning. 

 To-morrow, I suppose, 1 shall be obliged to 

 clear another tray. Well — "Sufficient unto the 

 day is the labor thereof." 



9 r. M. — Set to work once more to puzzle over 

 my supposed new species. Can And no descrip- 

 tion to suit it in any work that I possess. Can 

 it be really a new species? As usually happens 

 in such cases, there are several species belonging 

 to the genus, the descriptions of which are only 

 to be met with in certain rare and expensive 

 works which I am not rich enough to buy. 

 What shall I do? I have it! I will enclose some 

 specimens, so securely packed that they can not 

 possibly come to any harm, in a letter to one of 



