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forms and to cultivate descriptive work, to the neglect of the choicer, broader fields of an 

 ever-opening science. It is this danger to which I venture briefly to call your attention 

 to-day, not by way of disparaging the former, but rather in the hope that some of our 

 vounger members, who have not yet fallen into the ruts of work, may be induced to turn 

 their attention to some of the more fruitful fields of diligent research. 



We should not apply the term descriptive work merely to the study of the external 

 features of insects. The great bulk of what passes for comparative anatomy, physiology 

 and embryology, is purely descriptive, and is only to be awarded a higher grade in a scale 

 of studies than that which deals with the external properties, when it requires a better 

 training of the hand and eye to carry it out, and greater patience of investigation. We 

 pass at once to a higher grade of research when we deal with comparisons or processes 

 (which, of course, involve comparisons). All good descriptive work, indeed, is also com- 

 parative ; but at the best it is so only in the narrowest sense, for only intimately allied 

 forms are compared. In descriptive work we deal with simple facts ; in comparative 

 work we deal with their collocation. "Facts," said Agassiz, one day, "Facts are stupid 

 things, until brought into connection with some general law." 



It is to this higher plane that concerns itself with general laws that I would urge the 

 young student to bend his steps. The way is hard ; but in this lies one of its charms, for 

 labour is its own reward. It is by patient plodding that the goal is reached ; every step 

 costs and counts ; the ever-broadening field of knowledge exhilarates the spirit and intensi- 

 fies the ambition ; there is no such thing as satiety — study of this sort never palls. 



It is hardly necessary to point out that so-called systematic work never reaches this 

 higher grade unless it is monographic ; unless it deals in a broad way with the relationship 

 and general affinities of insects. It is not my purpose to call attention here to the needs 

 of science in this department, as they are too patent to escape observation ; but if one 

 desires a model upon which to construct such work, one need not look further than the 

 " Revision of the Rhynchophora," by Drs. LeConte and Horn. Rather than linger here, 

 we prefer to pass directly to some of the obscurer fields of study. . 



When we compare the number of insect Embryologists in America with that of their 

 European colleagues, the result is somewhat disheartening and discreditable ; although 

 perhaps the comparison would not be quite so disproportionate were some of our students 

 to publish their notes. But take all that has been done upon both sides of the water, and 

 what a meagre showing it makes. Of how many families of Coleoptera alone have we the 

 embryonic history of a single species 1 Of two of the four families of butterflies, the 

 fertile eggs of which are perfectly easy to obtain, nothing is known. In short, one may 

 readily choose numbers of typical groups whose embryonic history would be a great 

 acquisition to science. Here is a broad field. From the special range of my own studies 

 let me recommend to anyone eager for this work to choose the eggs of our common copper 

 butterfly, which she will lay to order on sorrel, and the earlier stages of which can be 

 obtained from the parent at two or three different times of the year ; or the eggs of any 

 of our common skippers, which deposit on grass, and which are equally easy to obtain, 

 although only once a year. Or, if we turn to Orthoptera, the eggs of our common Oecanthus, 

 concealed all winter in raspberry twigs, are more transparent and more easily obtained than 

 those of any other cricket ; and our knowledge of the embryology of any of the Gryllidae 

 is very fragmentary, and of this particular tribe, nil. Better still, perhaps, would be the 

 choice of our common walking-stick, as it belongs to a bizarre and isolated type, now known 

 to be of very ancient ancestry, and of whose embryonic history nothing has been published. 

 I have, indeed, a few incomplete notes upon this insect, but they relate wholly to a late 

 period of development, and were made before the time of the microtome, when work over 

 such coarse-shelled eggs was very difficult and unsatisfactory. The eggs may be readily 

 procured, the insect being abundant in scrub-oak fields ; the mother drops the eggs loosely 

 on the ground, and from imprisoned specimens I have procured scores in a single season. 

 Any one who will glance over the history of what has been done in insect embryology will 

 be able to select a hundred examples as important and as easy to obtain as those already 

 named, and by concentrating his work upon them will do better service than in an aimless 

 selection of what may come to his hand. 



