8 
nomic entomologist in the country is not present. You will see by the 
printed program which has been submitted to you that there are pa- 
pers upon many important subjects, and arrangements have been made 
by which our meetings shall not clash with those of either of the other 
bodies before which entomological papers are to be read, so that there 
is nothing to prevent members wishing to do so from being present at 
the reading of all these papers during this week. By a mutual arrange- 
ment with the president of the Entomological Club of the A. A. A. S. 
authors have been requested to submit papers of economic interest to 
this association whilst those of scientific or systematic nature will come 
before the club or the section of biology. 
I trust, gentlemen, I may not be considered presumptuous if I make 
use of the opportunity, which you forced upon me when you elected 
me to this honorable position at the last annual meeting, to lay before 
you some ideas which have occurred to me by which we can make our. 
work more useful and also secure better facilities for making it popular 
throughout the country. Why is it that the botanist, the chemist, and 
the geologist do not elicit the amusement only, from the ignorant, which 
is called forth by the entomologist in prosecuting his investigations ? 
While not for one moment wishing to belittle their work I maintain 
stoutly that not one of these or all combined can compare with ento- 
mology in its possibilities when tested by the rule of Cui bono? The 
silent respect accorded these sciences is no doubt largely due to sup- 
posed, not to call them fietitious, virtues. 
The botanist has from ancient times been inseparably associated with 
medicine and the discovery of a panacea for all the ills to which mortal 
man is heir. Even in the wilderness, with a handful of herbs he is ex- 
empt from molestation by either Indian or white man run wild. The 
chemist again deals with things unintelligible to the masses, illustrated 
with loud noises and nasty smells, and there has come down with him 
from the middle ages a sort of twin-brotherhood with the aichemist and 
the practicers of other dark arts—the possibility of his discovering in 
his laboratory an easy means of creating, without hard work, gold, that 
which is by most men most coveted and for which many will commit 
crime or be induced to acts mean and contemptible. Too true even to- 
day are Virgil’s words: ‘*‘ Quid non mortalia pectora coges, Auri sacra 
James!” What will you not compel mortal breasts to do, cursed 
lust for gold! The geologist, with his pick, or his humble but sordid, 
vulture-like follower, the ** prospector,” means to the uneducated eye a 
public benefactor, who may find that purest but most degrading metal, 
the search for which is the mainspring and motor of so many lives. 
Who that has traveled in the far West has not seen the magie effect 
in removing difficulties of the words ‘‘I am working for the Geological 
Survey?” And yet—I say it not as a wail—there is no such respect for 
the ‘“‘bug sharp” or *“ grasshopper tenderfoot,” who has saved them 
there, in that very country, the very means of subsistence, and he is 
