714 HINTS FOR THE PROMOTION OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY. 
sonian Institution, on a secure basis, and nearly in the form de- 
vised by its learned secretary, Prof. Joseph Henry ; whereby the 
funds were employed chiefly in the assistance of investigators and 
explorers, and in the publication of scientific memoirs. 
It has long been the privilege of those who labor to extend 
the boundaries of human knowledge to work hard and (in ordi- 
nary phraseology) to find themselves: and, until the organization 
of the Smithsonian Institution, it was their further privilege, in 
this country, to publish at their own individual expense all me- 
moirs, which from bulk or cost of illustration were beyond the 
limited means of local scientific societies. 
Under the fostering influence of this, among the most noble 
of the intellectual charities of the age, many valuable works on. 
abstract science have been published ; which, though produced in 
less than one-third of a century, by a small number of investiga- 
tors, thinly dispersed over a large extent of territory, would do 
honor to older communities, in which students of science and their 
labors are not unfrequently cared for by the protecting influ- 
ence of government. 
It hus thus come to pass that manuals and catalogues of several 
orders of insects have been prepared by the students best qualified 
to give, in a condensed form, compilations of the latest results of 
investigation, or entitled to put forth their own views of classifica- 
tion, as worthy of acceptance; and in the preparation of this 
series of works, valuable assistance has been rendered in orders 
which had not received attention from our native students, by 
some of the best European authorities on those subjects, among 
whom are specially to be remembered with gratitude Hagen, Loew, 
Osten-Sacken and De Saussure. 
The excellence of the memoirs thus published by the Smithso- 
nian Institution results from two facts ; the persons invited to pre- 
pare the work are those who are recognized by scientific men as 
most competent for the labor; and the memoirs when prepared are 
submitted to committees capable of judging of their value. Neg- 
lect of these precautions will probably ensure greater or less failure 
in attempts to procure works for either primary or ad vanced sel- 
entific instruction; and I am the more confirmed in this opinion 
by the miserable result attending the munificent expenditure ot 
the state of New York, on the volume illustrative of insects 10- 
- jurious to agriculture. Compiled by a person ignorant of the 
