260 



THE AMERICAN 



of an average insect in its four stages in anything 

 like a day's time. Indeed, in most cases, it takes 

 much longer to make a good figure than to write 

 out a good description, and, in our estimation, 

 the person who makes a good and diagnostic 

 figure of any of the transient preparatory states 

 of an insect, is entitled to fully as much credit 

 as the one who writes out the description ; and 

 we have always felt inclined to give AVestwood 

 as much credit for his excellent ont-line block- 

 illustrations, as for the still more excellent text 

 in his Introduction. But let us put the time 

 required for this purpose at one day, wliich 

 makes the time devoted to the drawings exactly 

 equal to the time devoted to the manuscript of 

 our proposed Pocket Edition of the little World 

 of Insects. Then it follows, on the assumption 

 that we have to add another 1,666 years to the 

 1,666 years already taken into account; wliich 

 makes the sum total 8,3;-j2 years. Now, it is 

 notorious that naturalists — being as a rule usu- 

 ally moral and regular in their habits — live to 

 a good old age, and we will make for them tlic 

 liberal estimate of an average life of 80 years ; 

 but on the other hand, artists are generally loose 

 in their mode of life, and we caunot, w^ith the 

 statistics before us, grant them a longer average 

 term than 50 years. Consequently, the average 

 life of the two classes of persons required, in 

 equal numbers, for our Cabinet Encyclopoedia 

 will be only 65 years ; and allowing 25 years for 

 the education of each individual naturalist and 

 artist, there will remain a clear available average 

 surplus of 40 years as tliQ average working life 

 of each class. Let us now divide the sum total 

 of 3,332 years by 40, which represents in years 

 the working life of each of our workmen, and 

 we arrive at the astounding conclusion that it 

 will require the entire working life of 83 persons 

 to execute the manuscript and the drawings for 

 the little work which the eye of Mr. Lintuer 

 has pictured to himself as likely to, exist, perhaps 

 before he liimself sinks into the grave ! 



3rd. The cost of printing, in the style of the 

 American Ektojiologist, 10,000 copies of an 

 octavo volume of 625 pages, including type- 

 setting, proof-reading, press-work and paper, 

 but charging nothing for any wood-cut illustra- 

 tions, would foot up about $1,000; and as we 

 wish to be liberal, we will charge nothing for the 

 binding. The cost of the 125 pages of colored 

 illustrations, including the pay of the artists 

 who execute the drawings, would range from 

 $125,000 upwards into the clouds, according to 

 the style of Avork required. This gives a total 

 of at least $126,000 for each octavo volume ; and 

 as there are to be 1,000 such voluTOes, we shall 



require for the practical carrying out of Mr. 

 Lintner's poetical concejjtions, the snug little 

 sum of very nearly one hundred and twenty- 

 six MILLION DOLLARS. The Statistical reader 

 will no doubt have noticed long before this, that 

 we allow no ijecuniary pay whatever to the 

 naturalists who execute the manuscript of our 

 imaginary work. We could not in conscience 

 do so ; for we believe there are scores of ento- 

 mologists anxiously knocking every day at the 

 doors of our Scientific Academies and Associa- 

 tions with manuscripts in hand containing de- 

 scriptions of their new species; and these MSS. 

 are most distinterestedly ofliered for publication 

 in the jirinted Transactions of such societies, 

 their authors never dreaming of receiving the 

 least pecuniary compensation for all the labor 

 and trouble they have been at in preparing their' 

 papers for the press. 



The question is perpetually put to us, " Why 

 is there no work on the Entomology of the 

 United States, which will enable us to identify 

 and name any particular insect of the country 

 with as much case as the Botanical student can 

 identify and name any particular one of our 

 plants, by referring to Gray's Manual of Bo- 

 tany?" To such questions as these we beg leave 

 to reply as follows: In the first place, it is not 

 true that Gray's Manual covers the flora of the 

 whole Union ; for it professedly only comprises 

 that of a region which forms less than one-eighth 

 part of the territory now owned by Uncle Sam. 

 In the second place, even in this very limited 

 region, it entirely omits the most difficult and 

 perhaps the most interesting part of the flora, 

 that is the Mosses and Lichens, the Funguses 

 and the Seaweeds (Alc/oi) ; and even with such 

 other families of the Cryptogamous or Flower- 

 less plants as are treated of therein, namely, the 

 Horsetails, the Ferns, the Club-mosses, and the 

 "Water-ferns or Hydropterides, the space allotted 

 to these groups is scarcely one-thirtieth part of 

 the space allotted to the Phanerogamous or 

 Flowering plants. For any one, therefore, to 

 consider Gray's Manual— and we fully acknowl- 

 edge the unrivalled excellence of this work, so 

 far as it goes— as a complete Flora of the whole 

 United States, would be pretty much like claim- 

 ing that the works of Dr. J. L. LeConte, on the 

 one single Order of Insects out of the whole 

 eight Orders, namely, tlie Beetles or Coleoptera, 

 are equivalent to a complete Entomological Fauna 

 of all the Insects found in the entire Union. In 

 the third place, it is generally estimated that the 

 number of insects exceeds at least four or five- 

 fold that of plants to be found in any particular 

 j-egion. Calculating upon several distinct bases 



