Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/214

210 So we must at the outset classify our students and determine what is really meant by an entomologist:

First of all, we have those individuals who devote their energies to the study of adult specimens only; describing species and genera, revising and monographing groups and, in short, devoting themselves altogether to systematic work. This is essential work, for until species are made known and tagged there is nothing to speak or write about and, no matter how interesting their structure or habits, the information is absolutely useless or unavailable to others, until it can be applied by some definite term to some definite concept.

The systematist then, no matter how little he may know of the insects outside of the dry specimens with which he works, is entitled to be called an entomologist and to have his good deeds recorded here.

Then we have, secondly, those students to whom the systematic position of an insect is a matter of little account; but who are interested in its life history, in its development, in its relation to its surroundings and more or less, perhaps, in its economic importance to man or to some set of men. Without question, these students also are eminently entitled to be considered as entomologists and there is no body of men whose work is of greater importance to the community than those falling under this heading.

In a third category come those who see in the specimen before them a combination of structures of greater or less interest or importance; who care little or nothing for its life history or economic importance, and nothing at all for its systematic position. They need the name of the species only to designate the particular organism that was studied. The work of these students is of the highest possible importance; but they are not entomologists, though their studies may be confined to insect structures. They are anatomists or histologists, depending upon whether they study it grossly, with dissecting needles and low power lenses, or whether they first slice it into sections and then use the high power microscope to look through them. It goes without saying that any member of the first and second division may be a member of the third as well, and I would not be understood as in any way belittling the importance of the work done by these men.

A fourth class is interested in certain species of insects only because of their relation to some other animal or to man, and only in so far as that relation exists. Such are they who study mosquitoes only as intermediate hosts of diseases of man, or bot flies only as parasites of animals. The work done by these students is of intense scientific and practical interest and of the utmost importance to the community, but they are not entomologists, although some of those carrying on this kind of work are entitled to rank as such because of other work done.

And now, what about him who falls under none of my