920 The American Naturalist. [October, 
to the U. S. Geological Survey, and economic geology to the State 
Surveys, where do the Universities come in? and where private 
investigators working at their own expense ? 
It has been said that most men, if they had the opportunity, 
would be despots, and they would at the present time, as they 
have often in the past, plead some public good as their excuse- 
But in science most especially despötism is impossible. The inves- 
tigator has the “inalienable right” to “ life, liberty, and the pur- 
suit of happiness” in the direction of scientific researches, and no 
man is competent to tell him what he shall do and what he shall 
not do. His raison d'etre is the quality of the work he does, and 
if his work is bad, it simply sinks out of sight. What good he 
does will be credited to him in the court of approval of the world 
of science, where everything stands on its merits, and local ambi- 
tions and political tactics are unknown.—C. 
—WHILE there were a goodly number of entomological papers 
read at the recent Indianapolis meeting of the Society for the 
Promotion of Agricultural Science and the Entomological Club 
of the A. A. A. S., there was a notable scarcity of such papers 
before the Biological Section of the Association. This paucity 
was a subject of remark not only among entomologists, but 
workers in other lines as well. It is very desirable that in future 
years students of insect life furnish more papers of general 
biological interest, following in this respect the excellent example 
set by the botanists. While there is just now an urgent demand 
for the solution of many purely economic problems in entomology, 
and official workers are wisely devoting much of their time to - 
these, they can scarcely afford to neglect entirely the biological 
side of their subject. Not only is there great need of the eluci- 
dation of insect life-histories, many of which are complex and 
difficult to determine, but there are hundreds of points where 
entomology touches the problems of general biology, and is able 
to aid greatly in their solution. No better illustration of this can 
be cited than the admirable researches of Professor and Mrs. 
Peckham upon the senses of wasps and sexual selection and mim- 
icry in the spiders of the family Attide. Papers upon the classi- 
