7 
help educate their own people in this direction, and this could not be 
the case if they were our superiors. We have a world-wide reputation 
for being an energetic and ingenious people, and I do not believe it is 
our scientific abilities they want so much as that mixture of scieuce— 
ingenuity, and activity—that we are known to possess. They want 
entomologists that have not had their stock of common sense educated 
out of them in their preparation for their work. Some of our educa- 
tional institutions are sending out just such men, and some are not. 
In some cases it is apparently a source of annoyance to an institution 
to have that sort of a man get away and out intothe world. But some 
of them are not only getting away, but actually doing pretty good work 
in the sacred institutions themselves. 
In many cases the entomologists connected with our agricultural 
colleges are doing their very best work at the expense of their holidays, 
vacations, and during the time when most people are asleep. Not only 
this, but they furnish their own books and scientific journals, while 
their gratuitous labor adds not a penny to their salary. I believe 
that justice to those who are working in this way demands this expla- 
nation, because, aside from a few among our agricultural colleges it 
is absolutely impossible to do this kind of work creditably with the 
facilities furnished by these institutions and under their present man- 
agement. * * * 
The entomological work done in this country is both good and bad, 
and I am free to say that in that respect we do not appear to differ 
materially from other countries, except that possibly the proportions 
are not the same. The mania for manufacturing species, or such so 
called, appears to be almost a disease, very contagious among freshly 
graduated students, but nevertheless not wholly confined to these nor, 
in fact, to the New World. There has long been an unsettled question 
as to which is the more important, the man who first describes a species 
or the one who first works out the life history of that species and its 
interrelations with other species. Now, 1 have come to look upon this 
question in this light: We can not conveniently refer to a form with- 
out that form having a name, hence the description and naming of a 
species is the first thing in order. Without this name we can do but 
very little in the way of biological studies. But it is these same studies 
that frequently decide whether or not the species is a valid one, 
All great armies, I believe, have attached to them what is known in 
our country as a pioneer corps, whose business it is to move in advance, 
build bridges and roads, dig intrenchments, and otherwise facilitate the 
movements of the army from whose regiments the members of the corps 
had been detailed. It seems to me that the systematic entomologist, or, 
in fact, any person who is engaged in purely descriptive work, belongs 
to just such acorps. These workers are the pioneers whose labors make 
further investigations more practicable, if not, indeed, possible. But 
the highest ability and most thorough training is to be found where it 
is most necessary, viz, in the army which follows behind But let us 
