J. R. Matthews.
History of the Cambridge Entomological Club.
Psyche 81:3-37, 1974.

Full text (searchable PDF, 5772K)
Durable link: http://psyche.entclub.org/81/81-003.html

The following unprocessed text is extracted from the PDF file, and is likely to be both incomplete and full of errors. Please consult the PDF file for the complete article.

HISTORY OF THE
CAMBRIDGE ENTOMOLOGICAL CLUB*
BY JANICE R. MATTHEWS
Department of Entomology
University of Georgia
Athens, Ga. 30601
On a Friday evening, January 9, 1874, Dr. Hermann A. Hagen, Professor of Entomology at Harvard College and Curator at the Museum of 'Comparative Zoology, invited a group of twelve men to his home at 7 Putnam Street in Cambridge, to consider the question of 'forming an entomological society. Most of them had been meeting informally for several years as a section of the Boston Society of Natural History, but some had more ambitious plans. Wanting to publish a journal, to meet outside of Boston, and to have members from all over the country, they desired to form "an organization independent of any other" - which was to be the Cambridge Entomological Club.
Among the twelve present, probably the two most influential that first evening were Dr. Hagen and Samuel Scudder [1,2]. Dr. Hagen was the first professor of entomology in the United States; he had left Germany in 1867 at the invitation of Louis Agassiz to take charge of the entomological department of the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, and had been appointed to his professorship at Harvard in 1870, at the age of 53.f But although *This article is based on a term paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Arts in Teaching from Harvard University, 1967. The secretaries' records, minutes of the Club meetings, and other pertinent documents were placed at my disposal by the officers of the Club.
In the present account, quoted passages without specific references are taken directly from the minutes of the meetings. The original manuscript has been placed on permanent file with other Cambridge Entomological Club historical documents in the Museum of Comparative Zoology; it was revised and updated for publication here by the editor, F. M. Carpenter.
fEntomology had been recognized in America as a serious branch of science since the latter part of the eighteenth century, however. William Dandridge Peck [3], the first native born American entomologist, initiated the scientific study of insects at Harvard as that institution's first professor of natural history; as early as 1837 his student, Thaddeus W. Harris, while acting as librarian of Harvard College, gave a course in entomology that included brief field excursions [3,4]. Following Hagen's arrival in Cam- bridge, Harvard became a center of entomological activity, involving undergraduate and graduate students as well as more mature investigators.



================================================================================

4 Psyche [March
Dr. Hagen had held his professorial position for four years now, his first course of lectures had been given only the previous summer, and its enrollment had 'been but one student, J. H. Conxtock; when he did formally teach, Dr. Hagen's courses consisted of "lectures, given at rare intervals to advanced students." As this might indicate, Dr. Hagen's principal work and real devotion were centered about the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and to him other interests were secondary. So although most influential in the formation of the Entomological Club, and an enthusiastic supporter of its activities, Dr. Hagen did not wish any responsibility toward running it. Thus, when at this first meeting Dr. Hagen declined to take the chair (as he declined, or resigned from every office for which he was ever pro- posed in the Club), Samuel Scudder was chosen as chairman. A graduate of Williams College and Harvard's Lawrence Scien- tific School, Samuel Scudder had been an assistant to Agassiz, and at the time of the Club's founding was nearly 38 years old. Once considered "the greatest Orthopterist America has produced," he also worked on the diurnal Lepidoptera and, as the' foremost American student of fossil insects in his time, served as paleontologist to i-he U.S. Geological Survey from 1886 to 1892 [2]. Scudder was also a competent editor and a bibliophile; he served as assistant librarian of Harvard College and librarian of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Yet despite these and many other time consuming activities and before illness finally forced his withdrawal from active participation in 1903, he held various formal offices in the Cambridge Entomological Club for a total of eighteen years. Samuel Scudder having been appointed to the chair, the meeting moved on to the first order of business- the establishment of some guidelines for the new organization. Voting to keep it as informal as possible, "no more rules being made than are necessary," the members decided that the new Cambridge Entomological Club should have only one permanent officer, a secretary; to fill this position, they wisely chose 26 year old Benjamin Pickman Mann [5]. The son of Horace Mann, well known as a teacher and advocate of public schools, Benjamin had graduated from Harvard College only four years previously. He was a conscientious resea,rcher, a specialist in entomological literature and bibliography, who for many years to come would not only keep careful record of all Club proceedings, but serve as treasurer, librarian, and editor of the Club's publication. After Mann's appointment and the decision to hold the next meet- ing at Scudder's home, the Scientific Communications of the evening



================================================================================

19741 Mattheax- Cambridge Entomological Club 5 began. Dr. Hagen commented on the discovery of fossil galls, ap- parently caused by insects, preserved on a twig in amber from Mary- land; this was of special interest to Hagen, since he had published extensively on Baltic amber insects while he was still in Germany. There then ensued a general discussion of "the senses by which in- sects are caused to assembly for sexual or other purposes." This must have been a particularly interesting discussion because of the varied backgrounds represented. For example, there was Dr. A. S. Packard, who had been one of Agassiz's students and who had just finished his third year as State Entomologist of Massachusetts [6]. He and Scudder were nearly the same .age and they had been close friends since their undergraduate days, but Packard's experiences had been more varied: he had been a surgeon in the Civil War, a Cus- todian of the Boston Society of Natural History, a lecturer on ento- mology at Massachusetts Agricultural College and Bowdoin 'College; and he had studied marine life along the southeastern coast, and had published his well-known "Guide to the Study of Insects." However, his active association with the Entomological Club was to be very brief, for he was appointed to a professorship at Brown University in 1878, a position which he held until his death in 1905. Then, in contrast, there was Edward Burgess, at the age of 26, a recent graduate of Harvard College and a former assistant in the Museum of Comparative Zoology; he was currently Instructor in Entomology at the College, giving the "course of elementary instruc- tion in the study of insects." Although he became known in ento- mological circles for his published accounts of insect morphology, Burgess later won renown for his contributions to naval architecture [7]. At about the same age, there was James H. Emerton, who had already foretold his life interest by collecting spiders at over a hun- dred localities in New England [8]. A skilled artist, he had recently finished the first of innumerable illustrations he would make for A. S. Packard, S. H. Scudder, and many other zoologists. A trip to Europe and a position as curator in the museum of the Peabody Academy of Science at Salem soon removed him from the Cambridge scene for a few years but he continued to publish extensively on spiders and to take an active part in the Entomological Club until his death in 1931. Another member was Samuel Henshaw; at the age of 22 and without college training, he was at thte time beginning to work on the insect collection at the Boston Society of Natural History; he subsequently became an assistant in entomology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology and later ( I 9 I 2- I 927) its director



================================================================================

6 Psyche
[March
[g]. Of nearly identical age was George Dimmock, a Harvard fresh- man who had a strong interest in insects, especially Coleoptera and Lepidoptera.
Although on graduating from college he spent several years at the University of Leipzig in Germany, from which he re- ceived his doctorate, he later returned to Cambridge and for many years continued to be active in the Entomological Club [IO]. Young- est of all the founders of the Club was Herbert K. Morrison, only 19 years old, an energetic and serious student of noctuid moths. His experience on the first of the Club's excursions to the White Moun- tains in New Hampshire, a few months later, induced him to become a professional insect collector. During the next decade, he collected extensively in the United States, especially in such little-known re- gions as Washington Territory, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada, and he 'furnished countless specimens of many orders to specialists in this country and Europe. His death at the early age of 31 terminated a brilliant entomological career [I I 1. Also at this first meeting there was a European coleopterist, Eugene A. Schwarz. Born in Germany, he received his training at the Uni- versities of Breslau and Leipzig. In 1872, at the age of 28, he came to the Museum of Comparative Zoology as an assistant to Hagen. He was to stay in Cambridge only a few years, however, leaving in 1875 on several collecting trips and finally joining other entomolo- gists in the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, where he remained until his death in 1928 [12]. Very little can be said about the two remaining members present at the meeting. E. P. Austin, who was in the mining business, was an amateur coleopterist and published several papers on beetles in the course of the next few years, but he was not active in the Clulb after 1882. Even less is known of J. C. Munro, who lived in Lexington; he appears not to have attended any other meetings of the Club. One individual, George R. Crotch, although not present at the first meeting, or in fact any other meeting of the Club, was regarded by all as one of the founders. He had become interested in insects, especially Coleoptera, while an undergraduate at Cambridge Uni- versity in England. He had collected extensively in Europe and in late 1872 he had come to this country to collect insects in the western states. He was a very energetic and enthusiastic entomologist and a prolific writer [13]. In late 1873, at the age of 31, he accepted a position as assistant at the Museum with Hagen. By the end of that



================================================================================

19741 Matthews - Cambridge Entornological Club 7



================================================================================

8 Psyche
[March
year, however, he had developed tuberculosis and was unable to attend the first meeting of the Club. He died six months later.* At the second meeting,
held at Scudder's house (156 Brattle
Street), there were discussions of such topics as the identity of a borer destroying an elm tree at Henry W. Longfellow's house (Hagen), of the metamorphosis of the Saturniidae (Morrison) and of the preparation of lepidopterous larvae for preservation (Hagen, Scudder, Morrison). Seven new members were elected : J. A. Allen, C. E. Hamlin, and C. R. Osten Sacken, all assistants at the Mu- seum; Dr. Walter Faxon, curator at the Museum; H. G. Hubbard and Roland Thaxter, both Harvard undergraduates; and C. P. Whitney, of Milford, New Hampshire, the first non-resident mem- ber. Osten Sacken began collecting insects, especially Diptera, when he was a boy in Russia; he was on the staff of the Russian Legation in this country for 27 years but at the age of 45, in 1873, he resigned to become an assistant to Hagen. He was an active participant in the Entomological Club for the entire period during which he was working at the Museum, but after experiencing two winters in Cambridge he moved to Rhode Island (a choice "influenced by the temperate winter-climate") ; and in 1877, his work on the Diptera of North America finished, he returned to Europe [14]. Hubbard became acquainted with E. A. Schwarz at the meetings of the Club and shortly after they formed a collecting team, ultimately resulting in the famous "Hubbard and Schwarz" collection of Coleoptera [ I 51. The other undergraduate, Thaxter, started as an entomologist and was active in the Club for many years, his first ten papers being published in Psyche. However, his interest was directed by Pro- fessor Farlow towards fungi parasitic on insects, and he subsequently became Professor of Cryptogamic Botany at Harvard, with most of his research being on these parasitic fungi, especially the Laboul- beniales.
After the third meeting, the Cambridge Entomological Club gathered at a little building nicknamed the "en~tomologicon," situated in the backyard of B. P. Mann's residence at 19 Follen Street [16]. These early meetings had no ~lanned program; at each meeting, a different member was chosen chairman and the minutes and acquisi- tions to the Club's library were read. The remainder of the meeting was then opened to general discussion and the exhibition of new *The list of signatures of the founding members in the minutes of the first meeting includes a line that reads: "This was to have been the place for the name of George Robert Crotch, Cambridge, England."



================================================================================

Matthews - Cambridge Entomological Club
New - England
JOURNAL OF EDUCATION.
Boston, Mass., August 21, 1875.
The Cambridge Entomological Club.
-
CAMI* 01: THE CAMISRIDGK ENTOMOLOGICAL CI,U~:, 1 M'r. WASHINGTON, July, tiS75. (
MR. EDITOR :-This is the first uncomfortable clay we have had. The clouds rise from tlie valley and descend from the summit by turns, driven by tlie shifting currents of air, and we get more of the fog and drizzly showers here on the middle of the mountain than they have either above or below us. Once in a while we catch a glimpse uf Mt. Carter, with half a dozen little clouds play- ing a stately game of tag among his green ravines, or of the Glen House in the sunny valley, but it is only for an instant, and though we can hear the stage rattling along half a mile overhead, we have not seen the road above the trees since sunrise. Alter passing the five-mile post an extensive view is opened to- ward Conway, taking in several very picturesque mountains and lakes, the summit of Mt. Washington tower on the right, and in the middle distance tlie rugged sides of the south wall of Tucker- man's ravine. Here is the beginning of the habitat of the Mount- ain ISuttertly, a species peculiar to this locality and eagerly sought by nearly all our party. They have the curious habit of flattening their wings down upon the ground or rock when they alight tt. avoid the wind, but such is the force of habit that they do so when it is a calm also, raising them slowly afterwards as if it were a sec- ond thought. The caterpillars live on a coarse kind of sedge which grows here.
Proceeding to the summit we arrived in season to witness the ascent of the singular looking little engine and car. The engine being built for up-hill work seems, as one of the party aptly ex- pressed it, to " tip down" as soon as it comes on the piece of level track in part of the platform. Most of us, after a rapid glance at three States and a hundred lakes and rivers, devoted our time to liunting Alpine beetles which abound under the rocks. Nearly all these are species peculiar to high mountains, but on fair days many butterflies, flies, and wasps wander up from the valleys. Return- ing by moonlight, we did aml>& justice to the fried hominy and syrup which the stay-at-homes had provided, and at ten o'clock when the rain came splashing downin torrents, most of us were too drowsy to think that the morrow's projected trip to Tucker- nail's ravine must be abandoned.
Yours truly, WAITER 110x1 K.
Portion of a letter written by Club member Walter Hoxie while at the C.E.C. camp, Mt. Washington, July, 1875, and published in the New-England Journal of Education. [Copy in C.E.C. archives.]



================================================================================

10 Psyche [March
materials and curiosities. For its first three years, the Club continued in this strictly informal manner, and included not only regular meet- ings but excursions to areas df entomological interest. At the 7th meeting, July, 1874, "the Chairman had to be con- tented with sitting on a rock instead of a chair, a, feat which he performed with sufficient grace and dignity, wrapped in a blanket." This peculiar situation occurred because, during the summer of 1874, an "Entomologists' Camp" was held on Mt. Washington in New Hampshire, a "quarter of a mile below the Halfway House and far enough into the woods to be out of sight of the road." The party, including members and non-members alike, left Boston by Portland steamer, and remained in New Hampshire for almost a month; the expenses, including round-trip fare from Boston, were about twenty dollars apiece, and provisions, tents, etc., were provided by the Club Excursion Committee - Dimmock, Austin and Mann. A regular Club meeting was held, although it was "several times disturbed by Mr. Morrison's frantic attempts to capture the moths attracted by the sole luminary of the occasion, his own lantern." But in the main, these summer excursions were light-hearted affairs, and when the next Mt. Washington announcement, for July, 1875, stated that "members may invite the attendance of ladies," the ten men who appeared at the meeting had fourteen women with them. In the early years, there was no intention to limit place of meetings, which were often held outside the borders of Massachusetts. Nor was there distinction made between resid'ent and non-resident mem- bers. Both of these policies speedily changed the Club from a local organization to one including members from many parts of the coun- try. By January, 1879, the secretary reported 47 members residing outside of New England, and only 19 within the area, most of them in the vicinity of Boston and Cambridge. At the fourth meeting, on April 10, 1874, Samuel Scudder pro- posed that the Cambridge Entomological Club should begin publica- tion of a monthly journal. A lively and lengthy discussion followed this proposal, ending in the decision to undertake such a project. The title of this new "Organ of the Cambridge Entomological Club,'' proposed by Scudder, was to be Psyche, derived from the Greek word for butterfly.
B.
P. Mann was elected as the editor for this new publication and "charged with the execution of all but the scientific



================================================================================

19741
Matthews - Cam bridge Entomological Club Camp of the Cambridge Ento~alogical Ckb, HALF-WAY HOUSE,
Mt. Washington, N. H.
All matters relating to tents, their location, etc. will be atten- ded to by
B. PICKMAN MANN, Camp Master, C. E. C.
NO SUGARING OF TREES
ALLOWED WITHIN 500 FEET
OF THE CAMP!!!
- -
--
Memorabilia of the Mt. Washington camp of the Entomological Club, 1874 and 1875. Top: letterhead of camp stationery; middle and bottom: reproductions of signs posted at the camp. work, which latter the members were engaged to supply." The first number, to consist of four pages, was to be ready by the next monthly meeting of the Club, and the subscription price was set at one dollar per year.
The Club thus began Volume I of Psyche (which, as completed, covers the years 1874-1876), as a place for publishing "biological contributions upon Arthropoda from any competent per- son," and miscellaneous entomological information, while assiduously avoiding "all discussion of vexed questions." However, economic entomology and taxonomic descriptions were less 'favored than con- tributions to general anatomy and biological entomology. But the most important part of Psyche, in the opinion of the founders, was to be the Bibliographic Record. Through this the Club set out ambitiously to record all writings upon entomology published in North America, and all foreign writings upon North American entomology, from the beginning of the year 1874, with a brief note on the contents of each. The original model for the Bibliographical



================================================================================

12 Psyche [March
Record was clearly Hagen's Bibliotheca entomologica, which ap- peared in two volumes in I 862 and 1863. The position of Psyche in the history of the Cambridge Entomo- logical Club was to be a paradoxical one, for while it brought the Club into a position of national renown, at the same time it led to financial problems. Accordingly, early in 1876, the Club voted to establish annual dues of $2 for New England members and also designated a committee to raise a publication fund for Psyche, "the principal of the fund to be invested in trust securities" and the income to be used for the publications of the Club. A year later, January 12, 1877, there being no financial improvement and nothing in the publication fund, it was decided that additional measures should be
"taken to increase the effectiveness of
the work of the
Club and to obtain money to defray the expenses of the Club and of the publication of Psyche." Scudder's proposal, which was adopted, was that' "an act of incorporation should be performed" and he ad- vised the adoption by the Club of a Constitution and By-laws, "which must be in force as a preliminary to the act of incorporation." The Constitution and By-laws were promptly approved. At the following meeting, February 9, 1877, with a Justice of the Peace for Middle- sex County in attendance, Scudder was elected President and Mann was elected Secretary and Treasurer, and these officers and the mem- bers of the executive committee signed the agreement of association. The Secretary of the Commonwealth, Henry B. Pierce, formally signed the Certificate of Incorporation on March 9, 1877.* At the time o,f incorporation of the Club there were 48 members, half of the number being resident in the Boston-Cambridge area. The meetings were well attended, with an average olf I I memb)ers in addition to a few guests, and they were active affairs, having lively discussions. Most meetings were held at various members' residences, though some were held at an office that Scudder used for editing his journal, Science. Many additional non-resident entomologists were *The Corporation was established according to the provisions of Chapter 375 of the Acts of the General Court of Massachusetts, passed in the same year as the founding of the Club, 1874.
The incorporation apparently had
no effect on the Club.
No annual reports of the financial holdings of the Club were ever submitted to the Secretary of the Commonwealth, as re- quired by law, and on March 24, 1964, eighty-seven years later, the Secre- tary of the Commonwealth dissolved the Corporation, in accordance with Chapter 180, section 26A, of the General Laws. Revival of the Corporation
is, however, provided for in the legislative actions- Editor



================================================================================

19741 Matthews - Cambridge Entomological Club 13 Samuel Scudder's study in the yard of his house, 156 Brattle St., Cam- bridge. Consisting of a single large room, it included an extensive cabinet of insect drawers on one wall, a fireplace, and book shelves on two walls. The Cambridge Entomological Club held virtually all of its meetings here from. 1888-1901, [Photograph, probably taken about 1890, in M.C.Z. archives.] elected to membership, even some as officers of the Club, presumably as a means of increasing subscriptions to Psyche. One of the major interests of the members at this time, apart from Psyche, was the Club Library, the goal being to have in one place as nearly complete a collection of entomological publications as possible for the use of the members. This is not surprising, since both Scudder and Mann were bibliophiles. At first the secretary of the Club had the respon- sibility of recording all these accessions but in 1880 a librarian was elected. By 1886 the Club library included 1652 volumes and sepa- rates, which were at first housed in Mann's office but later transferred to Scudder's study.
By 1890 the membership of the Club had changed greatly. Mana had left Cambridge permanently in 1887 to do bibliographic work for the Federal Department of Agriculture; and several other of the original members, including Austin, Dimmock, Morrison, Pack- ard and Schwarz, had moved away from the Cambridge area, most



================================================================================

14 Psyche [March
of them beyond New England. Financial problems at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, following Agassiz's death, reduced the funds available for assistants. Hagen, though he lived for another three years, was stricken with paralysis in 1890 and the February meeting of that year was the last he attended. During the period from I 890 to 1900, when the meetings were held in Scudder's study, only five resident members were elected to the Club, but four of these were to play a most important part in the history of the or- ganization. One of them, A. P. Morse, then 28 years of age, was an assistant in the zoology department of Wellesley College; later he became associated with the Boston Society of Natural History, and still later with the Carnegie Institution of Washington, as a specialist in Orthoptera. He continued to be active in the Ento- mological Club for a total of 43 years, until his health failed in 1935 [17]. Another of the new members was F. C. Bowditch, an amateur coleopterist with special interests in the Chrysomelidae; in the course of his life he built up an extensive and important collection of the Chrysomelidae of the world, now at the Museum of Compara-