Jump to content

Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/475

From Wikisource
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
INSECTS AND ENTOMOLOGISTS
471

lepidopterous insects of Georgia, is an example of the combination of artist and entomologist, and his published drawings give no idea of the amount of the work he actually did, nor any real idea of its beauty and accuracy. There are bundles of unpublished drawings in the British Museum, a few of them in the Boston Society of Natural History, and others scattered about. Some of the insects figured have never been found since; some, described from the figures by Guenée, Boisduval and others have never been satisfactorily identified, and I well remember my hunt through Paris, over twenty years ago, under the guidance of M. Aug. Sallé after the original of one of Boisduval's descriptions, which was finally located in the possession of a former housekeeper, who fell heir to some of the effects of her master.

A hale, hearty old man was Dr. J. G. Morris, of Baltimore, when I first met him thirty years or more ago, and never was I more pleased to meet any one because, somehow, I had received the impression that be was dead. Dr. Morris made the first attempt to gather together the descriptions of American lepidoptera, and his volume in the Smithsonian series proved a very useful one to the collectors of that day. Unfortunately the scheme was never completed, and a very small section only of the Heterocera is represented in the volume. Dr. Morris did not, I believe, ever describe either genus or species, and never pretended to any extensive collection.

A. R. Grote, of Buffalo, and later, New York, was a most earnest worker in the heterocerous lepidoptera and chiefly in the Noctuidæ. To him we owe the first satisfactory arrangement of our species, and the identification of the species described earlier by Guenée and Walker. It was no light task, and how remarkably well done it was I did not realize until years thereafter, when I undertook similar work. Mr. Grote's collection is now in the British Museum, where I have had the opportunity of comparing its types with those of Walker and Guenée which are also in that rich treasure house.

Mr. W. H. Edwards, of Coalburg, W. Va., I never met, although his death is comparatively recent. But his magnificent work in the butterflies lives on, and will continue to live. Mr. Edwards was much more than a describer of genera and species. He was a real student of the life of the insects, and he did more to make known their early stages than any one other worker: and besides, he set up a standard of thoroughness and accuracy, that our younger students must live up to if they expect their work to be regarded. His collection is now in the Carnegie Museum, at Pittsburgh.

Mr. Henry Edwards, of New York City, was one of the centers of entomological interest in that city—hearty, whole-souled, enthusiastic. He made friends wherever he went and his travels carried him not only throughout our own country, but into Australian and Asiatic countries