species, from their habit of puncturing the stems of raspberry to desposit the eggs, 

 do considerable damage. The other groups are for the most part small, incon- 

 spicuous and relatively rare. There appears to exist a general idea that the con- 

 mon black, or "Field Cricket," is the famed "Cricket on the Hearth," which is, 

 in fact, a very different insect, usually light brown in color and of more slender 

 build. It is a common thing to see Gryllus domesticus included in popular lists 

 of insects as "common" when, in fact, it is one of the black crickets, usually Gryllus 

 abbreviatus or G. pennslyvanicus, which is really meant. 



THE COST OF CONDUCTING NATURE STUDY WORK. 

 Editorial in The Guide to Nature, by Dr. Edward F. Bigelow. 



Miss Ximena McGlashan, of Truckee, California, is conducting a corre- 

 spondence course under the auspices of the Agassiz Association for the study of 

 moths and butterflies. For amateur entomologists she issues a monthly magazine 

 of sixteen pages and for this charges fifty cents a number, or five dollars a year 

 in advance. The Agassiz Association is aiding her in every posible manner. Her 

 advertisement is in this number of The Guide to Nature. The nature-loving public 

 has been for so many years accustomed to the starting up of litttle magazines here 

 and there at fifty cents a year that they are horrified at this young girl's audacity 

 in daring to ask fifty cents for a copy of a sixteen-page pamphlet and five dollars 

 a year for the yearly subscription. The consequence is that a number of letters 

 have reached the Home Office protesting against such extraordinary and unseemly 

 charges for so small a magazine. Some of our friends have told us that we should 

 not permit such an extortionate business to be carried on under the name of The 

 Agassiz Association. But we must confess that the more strenuous these appeals, 

 the more have our sympathies gone out to this young girl, who is the first person of 

 whom I have had any knowledge in twenty-four years of editing natural history 

 magazines that has had the business sense to put the price at what the thing costs, 

 and what, with liberal patronage, will insure its success and perpetuity. 



Let us examine the matter as a correspondence course, and practically each 

 of her subscribers is a member of a correspondence school, as is each subscriber to 

 The Guide to Nature, whether a member of The Agassiz Association or not. It 

 is a curious fact that correspondence schools have put their prices many times 

 higher than five dollars and have built great edifices and prospered beyond descrip- 

 tion, but when any one puts the price for nature study work at five dollars there is 

 at once an outcry and clamor of protest. Before me are the announcements of 

 several correspondence schools in which the prices run from ten dollars upward. 

 Not one is as low as five dollars. If there is any other correspondence school that 

 conducts a course for five dollars I shall be pleased to hear from it. Miss 

 McGlashan offers a magazine and personal instructions for one year for that sum. 

 One would pay any good teacher of music a dollar or a dollar and a half for a half- 

 hour's lesson. One lesson a month would cost $ 1 8 a year. Miss McGlashan 

 gives far more in her little magazine than any music pupil could possibly receive in 

 a half hour of personal instruction. But we are told that in the last twenty-five 

 years many little natural history magazines have been published at fifty cents a 

 a year. Yes, but where are they now? Fourteen years ago, while I was editor 

 of "Popular Science News," that magazine incorporated in itself more than twenty 

 magazines that had either been bought or had been discontinued because they 

 could not succeed at fifty cents or a dollar or, in some cases, even one and one-half 



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