37 

 A SIMPLE FORM OF ACCESSIONS CATALOGUE. 



By E. D. Ball, Fort Collins, Colo. 



This Association has listened in the past to three excellent papers 

 on organization methods in economic entomology, and any State worker 

 at the present time who has not a thoroughly satisfactory system of 

 recording his observations can not do better than carefully study the 

 papers presented on this subject by Dr. Forbes, Dr. Hopkins, and 

 Professor Webster; and if his department has an abundance of cler- 

 ical help he probably can not do better than to adopt one of these 

 systems. On the other hand, if his working force is somewhat limited 

 the modification hereafter suggested is submitted for his consideration. 

 The author has, however, no intention of offering a system in compe- 

 tition with either of these, but simply of suggesting one or two modi- 

 fications that can be used in connection with any of these systems or 

 a modified system to be used when it is impossible to carry out a more 

 elaborate one in detail. 



The average working force of our stations in economic entomology 

 does not exceed two men, and if the division of salary be any criterion 

 then not over one-third to one-half of their time is devoted to the eco- 

 nomic work. Now, under such conditions it would be impracticable 

 to maintain a system of recording requiring the expenditure of any 

 considerable amount of time in the clerical part and at the same time 

 carry on any very extended experimentation, hampered as they are 

 by the ordinary routine of the college work. 



Another important factor that may well be considered here is that 

 in this combination of college and station not all collecting is along 

 economic lines, but that one of the duties as a college officer is to build 

 up a systematic collection, an obligation requiring almost endless years 

 of careful and thorough work. Naturally enough this work and that 

 of the station is carried on at the same time, and it would seem that 

 the best system of recording for the smaller stations, and, in fact, for 

 the great majority of our stations, would be that in which the two dif- 

 ferent objects could be combined, and that with a minimum amount 

 of clerical work, label writing, bookkeeping, etc. 



The following sj^stem which was experimented with by the author 

 and finally adopted at the Iowa station, and which has been used in 

 the Colorado station for three years, seems to meet these require- 

 ments and at the same time f urnisii a broad enough basis on which to 

 build up any one of the complete systems, if one chooses to do so. 



In this system, which may be conveniently called the date system 

 from its fundamental principle, the accession catalogue contains one 

 entry for each trip or special collection, this entry being in the form 

 of a date, giving the year, month, and day; then every specimen as it 

 is labeled up, in place of an accessions catalogue number, as in ordi- 

 nary way, bears the place of capture and the date on a single small 

 label. 



