Idaho semi-weekly world. [volume] (Idaho City, Idaho Territory) 1875-1908, 1889-02-01
WORTHY or STUDY.



The World Teeming with Countless OH
jects Tor MANS Investigation.
The man who limits himself to the
study of British butterflies has by no
means a difficult task before him, ii he
them than the names to which they are
scientifically entitled But when the
investigation of their life histories is
entered upon and all their varying
stages examined, their food and their
depredations in each of these stages
noted, he will find that years
will slip away without the pleas
ant task being half finished.
When the philosopher at the Autocrat's
breakfast table Indignantly rejected
the title of entomologist, being ambi-
coleopterist, or even OF ssscarab@ist, =
he proved himself aware of the ampli-
tude of the order to which he devoted
his toilsome days and harmless nights.
But the lepidopterists. for whose COM
paratively narrow field he had some
thing like contempt, can claim a scarce
ly less legion-like range of objects on
which to expend their care Every
| scale On every butterfy's wing is an
object of beauty and of the most intri-
cate design, and there is not single
| species the anatomy of which is
exactly the same as that Of its nearest
| relation, or the transformations of
! which do not reveal some curious diff
| ferences- A Dutch etomologist is said
| to have made fifteen different dissec-
tions of the cockchaser's thigh before
| he considered the labor he had UNDER
taken closed; and yet there is not an
| insect, from the largest to the most
| minute, which is not equally worthy of
not regard all toll wasted, except what
| is spent in eating and drinking,
making money and spending it.
| The 1epidopteris. is. however, not
without strong claims on the gratitude
Of mankind for, through his inquiries
the history of many OF our most de-
| structive garden and field pests have
been made clear, and their mischievous
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 en-
genealogical bureau, and now that al
agricultural department has been es
tablished in Whitehall, an entomelo
gist has been one of the first of its ap
pointments- Even if he goes no fur
Their than the circumvention of tn.
J caterpillars of the &c British
butterflies and the 1910 specie
! Of British moths, he will hav'
his hands full, without attending
being happily not within his province
But the annual South London exhi
! bition-which. temporary though it is
constitutes the only museum south @
: the Thames. which the world at larg
is free-ranges over a wider field tha
: the British insects. And the momen
we pass beyond the limits of thes
islands the number of butterfly specie
increases. In Europe there ar
no fewer than four hundred
Within an hours walk of Para, i
Brazil. Bates found 700 species, Will
over the whole world, though it is no
one-half explored from the entomc
logical point of view, there must b
, over 200, 900 different kinds of lepidoI
] ferrous insects. Each of these form
l has its own life history, from the eg
to the perfect insect, its own plants O
which it preys as caterpillar. and i
: own food when it attains to adult cor
!, dition, though thousands of them al
separated from their nearest allies
i differences the most minute.
u SQturQaH Rerieac.