THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S 
WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER. 
No. 94.] SATURDAY, JULY IT, 1858. [Price Id. 
OCCUPATION. 
We believe that some of our readers, 
especially now that it is vacation time, 
are apt to feel that unpleasant sensation 
of despondency produced by want of 
occupation. 
As Sydney Smith observed, “ If we 
have no necessary occupation, it becomes 
extremely difficult to make to ourselves 
occupations as entirely absorbing as 
those which necessity imposes and the 
‘ Times ’ lately quoted a curious illustra- 
tion of a man shut up in solitary con- 
finement, who, to prevent the unbroken 
monotony of prison-life wearing upon 
his mind, managed to procure for him- 
self a packet of pins : he counted them 
carefully, so that he should be sure of 
his reckoning, and then tossed them up 
to the ceiling, that they might be 
scattered as con fusedly as possible over 
the floor of his cell. He then steadily 
went to work to pick up the pins, and 
never rested until the tale was complete. 
Again and again, and day after day the 
operation was repeated, until he regained 
his liberty. 
This latter illustration is a remarkably 
good one for an entomologist whose 
occupation of collecting species may 
aptly be compared to picking up pins. 
These “ pins ” have been scattered broad- 
cast over the surface of the globe; and, 
at the very moment we are writing, 
hundreds of eager collectors are at work 
seeking for “ pins ” that have never yet 
been found. The captive alluded to 
when he had picked up all his pins 
had to scatter them about again, but 
we have no need to do that, for our tale 
never will be complete. 
Young entomologists need never suffer 
from a want of occupation : they need 
not be eternally catching and setting ; 
they can vary their pursuit by obser- 
vation and study. Observation and 
study are two courses of diet that should 
always be taken together. When the 
incipient begins to observe, he is 
amazed at what he sees; it is perfectly 
new to him, and he fancies must be 
equally new to other people, and he is 
thereby apt to become conceited ; by 
studying the works of other observer’s 
he finds that the fact, however in- 
teresting, is not new. 
In our juvenile peregrinations we 
chanced to observe some little black 
buttons attached to the surface 
of apple leaves by one end : we put 
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