THE COMSTOCK MEMORIAL 
II 
And thus it happened that to the class in Zoology of the Inverte¬ 
brates was assigned a prize of fifty dollars. 
The committee in charge decided that three students showed like 
merit and that the prize should be divided equally among them. 
These three were Simonds, a geologist, now Professor in the Univer¬ 
sity of Texas; Comstock, a chaser of butterflies, and myself, who 
passed in those days as a botanist. Simonds had made the neatest 
and most accurate drawings, so it was said. Jordan had written the 
best examination paper, and Comstock seemed to know the most 
about the subject. 
Simonds and I had a conference. We two had in sight money 
enough for another college year—not very clearly visible, to be sure, 
but seen to the eyes of hope. Comstock with no one behind him 
could feel to the bottom of his pocket. But he couldn’t afford to 
leave his insects to go out to make money and we couldn’t afford to 
lose him. Besides he deserved the prize. It is better to know 
animals than to write about them nicely or even to adorn one’s 
knowledge with fair pictures. So Simonds and I stood back and left 
the prize to Comstock. We were modest in those days and I don’t 
know that either of us ever took the pains to tell him. And soon 
after the chimes called him to be their master and then Dr. Wilder 
made him Instructor in Entomology. 
And thus was laid the foundation of the Department of Entomol¬ 
ogy at Cornell, the first established in America, perhaps the first in 
the world, and the little room in the McGraw tower with its batch 
of insect boxes has grown to be a great center of instruction, investiga¬ 
tion, and of practical application of knowledge, with eighteen teachers 
they tell me, besides student assistants, with over thirteen hundred 
students in actual attendance. 
I cannot estimate the value of all this to the farmers and horticul¬ 
turists of our country and I shall not try. Still less can I estimate 
the value of the training in realities all this work represents. Each 
day brings to student and teacher its share of new thoughts and new 
observations, for what is known in any science is only a small part 
of what should be taught. This the student must find out for himself. 
Every day in the real University new expeditions set forth in search 
of the unknown truth, whether it concerns the veining of a moth’s 
wing, the slipping of a glacier, or the freedom of the will, all new 
knowledge shows the orderliness of the whole which amid all change 
and all variation shows neither variableness nor shadow of turning. 
For all change has its own unchanging methods and standards. 
