Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1888-11-24
THE WORLD TEEMIaG
With Countless Interesting Creatures
Worthy Of study

Worthy Of study
The man who limits himself to the study
of British butterflies has by no means a
difficult task before him, if he aspires to
know nothing more about them than the
names to which they are scientifically en-
titled, says London writer. But when
the investigation of their life histories is
entered upon and all their varying stages
examined, their food and their depreda-
tions in each of these stages noted, he will
find that years viii slip away without the
pleasant task being half-fuished. When
the philosopher at the Autocrats break
fast table Indignantly rejected the title of
entomologist, being ambitious of no
loftier name than that of coleop-
terist, or even of "scarabelst," he
proved himself aware of the amplitude
of the order TO which he devoted his toll
some days and harmless nights. But the
lepidopterists, for whose comparatively
narrow field he had something like con-
tempt, can claim scarcely less legion-like
range of objects on which to expend their
care Every scale on every butterfiy's
wing is an object of beauty and of the
most intricate design, and there is not a
single species the anatomy of whichsis ex-
actly the same as that of its nearest rela-
ton, or the transformations of which
do not reveal some curious differences. A
Ddtch entomologist is said to have made
Is different dissections Of the cockchafer's
thigh before he considered the labor he
had undertaken closed, and yet there is
not an insect, from the largest to the
most minute, which is not equally worthy
of the same pains from any man who
does not regard all toll wasted, except
what is spent in eating and drinking,
making money and spending it. The lep-
idopterist is, however, not without strong
claims en- the gratitude of mankind, for
through his inquiries the history of many
of our most destructive garden and field
pests has been made clear and their mis-
chieEous career checked at an early stage.
So useful, indeed, has the economic ento-
mologist proved, that nearly every State
of the American Union supports an ex-
Genealogical bureau, and now that an ag-
ricultrzYal department has been established
in White Hall, an entomologist has been
one of the first of its appointments. Even
if he goes no farther than the circum-
ventien of the caterpillars Of the sixty-six
British butterflies and the L,9lo species of
British moths, he will have his hands full
without attending to the beetles and
the flies, the locusts being happily not
within his province. But the annual
South London exhibition-which, tempo
rary though as it is, constitutes the only
museum south of the Thames to which the
world at large is free-ranges over a wider
field than the British insects. And the
moment we pass beyond the limits of
these islands the number of bgtterhy spe-
cies increases. In Europe there are no
fewer than 400. Within an hours walk of
Para, in Brazil, Bates found 200 species,
while over the whole world, though it is
not one-half explored FROM the entomo-
logical point of view, there must be over
100000 different kinds of lepidopterous
insects. Each of these forms has its own
life history, from the egg to the perfect
insect, its own plants on which it preys
as caterpillar, and its own food when il
attains to adult condition, though thou
sands of them are separated from their
nearest allies by differences the most min
ute