[continued from here]

year, however, he had developed tuberculosis and was unable to attend the first meeting of the Club. He died six months later.*

[footnote] * 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."

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. LongfeIlow's house (Hagen), of the metamorphosis oi 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, alI assistants at the M useum; 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 member. Osten Sacken began collecting insects, especially Diptera, when he was aboy in Russia; he was on the staff of the Russian Legation in this country for 27 years but at the age oi 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 aiter they formed a coIlecting team, ultimately resulting in the famous "Hubbard and Schwarz" collection of Coleoptera [15]. 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 Professor 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 Laboulbeniales. After the third meeting, the Cambridge Entomological Club gathered at a little building nicknamed the "entomologicon," situated in the backyard of B. P. Mann's residence at 19 Follen Street [16]. These early meetings had no planned program; at each meeting, a different member was chosen chairman and the minutes and acquisitions to the Club's library were read. The remainder df the meeting was then opened to general discussion and the exhibition of new materials and curiosities. For its first three years, the Club continued in this strictly informal manner, and included not only regular meetings but excursions to areas of entomological interest. At the 7th meeting, July, 1874, "the Chairman had to be contented 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 resident and non-resident members. Both of these policies speedily changed the Club from a local organization to one including members from many parts of the country. By January, 1879, the secretary reported 47 members residing outside of New Engiand, and only 19 within the area, most of them in the vicinity of Boston and Cambridge.

[Figure] Camp of the Cambridge Entomological Club, HALF-WAY HOUSE, Mt. Washington, N. H. All matters relating to tents, their location, etc. will be attended to by B. PICKMAN MANN, Camp Master, C. E. C. NO SUGARING OF TREES ALLOWED WITHIN 500 FEET OF THE CAMP!!!

[Figure caption] 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.

The Beginnings of Psyche

At the fourth meeting, on April 10, 1874, Samuel Scudder proposed that the Cambridge Entomological Club should begin publication 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 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- I 876 ), as a place for publishing "biological contributions upon Arthropoda from any competent person," and miscellaneous entomological information, while assiduously avoiding "all discussion of vexed questions." However, economic entomology and taxonomic descriptions were less 'favored than contributions 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 Record was clearly Hagen's Bibliotheca entomologica, which appeared in two volumes in 1862 and 1863, The position of Psyche in the history of the Cambridge Entomological 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 advised 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 g, 1877, with a Justice of the Peace for Middlesex County in attendance, Scudder was elected President and Mann was elected Secretary and Treasurer, and these officers and the members 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.'"

[Footnote] * 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 required by law, and on March 24, 1964, eighty-seven years later, the Secretary 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

At the time of 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 of 11 members 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 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 responsibility of recording all these accessions but in 1880 a librarian was elected. By 1886 the Club library included 1652 volumes and separates, which were at first housed in Mann's office but later transferred to Scudder's study.

The Lean Years

By 1890 the membership of the Club had changed greatly. Mann 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, Packard and Schwarz, had moved away from the Cambridge area, most 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 189o and the February meeting of that year was the last he attended. During the period from 189\'a1 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 playa most important part in the history of the organization. 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 Entomological 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 Comparative Zoology [18]. The third of the members was J. W. Folsom, who was active in the Club while he was a graduate student at Harvard University. His early interests were in morphology and physiology of insects and he later taught entomology at the U niversity of Illinois before becoming associated with the U.S. Bureau of Entomology [19]. The fourth of this group was W. L. W. Field, who joined the Club at the age of 19, while he was a first year student in Harvard College. He was an enthusiastic lepidopterist and published several papers in Psyche on inheritance in butterflies.'* He attended meetings of the Club regularly and, as editor of Psyche from 1904-1909, was responsible for making significant improvements in its nature and content. Field did not continue in entomology, professionally, but taught biology at Milton Academy until 1917, when he became headmaster, a position that he held until 1942. These four members, in addition to Scudder, Henshaw and Roland Hayward (an amateur coleopterist who joined the Club in 1879 [20]), were the only individuals that attended the Club meetings from 1900 to 1903. The average attendance at these meetings, also held in Scudder's study, was between three and four.

[Footnote] *At the Club's meeting in September, 1907, Professor William Bateson of Cambridge University, England, was scheduled to be the speaker; last minute changes prevented his coming; so W. L. W. Field "gave an interesting talk on the breeding experiments" that were being conducted by Bateson, who has' "thus brought to the attention of the world again the long-neglected or forgotten Hereditary Laws discovered by Mendel."

The Harris Club

Just prior to 1900, another entomological club was formed, this time in the city of Boston. The moving force for this was Mr. H. H. Newcomb, an amateur lepidopterist and general insect collector. An organizational meeting was held on November 24, 1899, in his office on Court Street, Boston. The ten who were present were enthusiastic amateurs; most were in business or law, although a few were college students, not yet established professionally. W. L. W. Field, already a member of the Cambridge Club, was one of the ten and served as secretary of the new club for the three years of its existence. At their second meeting, the members decided on the name Harris Club, "in honor of Thaddeus William Harris, eminent among early American Entomologists, whose entire life was spent in the neighborhood of Boston.". In many ways the Harris Club paralleled the earlier days of the Cambridge Club. From the beginning, the members agreed "that the organization should be as informal as possible." The constitution generally expressed the same goals as that of the Cambridge Club. And as did its counterpart, the Harris Club had a library, but of a much less formal and extensive nature. They were an extremely enthusiastic group and held several field excursions - only in their case to Mt. Katahdin in Maine. By 1913 the Harris Club included 41 local members, although the average attendance at the meetings for the previous year had been only 12. As Field noted in one of his annual reports, there had been a progressive decrease in the percentage of members attending as the total membership increased. Field undoubtedly provided a liaison with the Cambridge Club and was almost certainly responsible for the suggestion that the Harris Club merge with the older organization. On January 13, 1903, Field and Newcomb proposed: "That the Harris Club be merged in the Cambridge Entomological Club, all members of the Harris Club of record] anuary 13, 1903, to be nominated on one ballot for membership in the Cambridge Entomological Club. The latter is an incorporated Club with a long and distinguished list of members, past and present.

[Footnote] *This was not the same organization as the Harris Entomological Club, which was founded in 1864 as a section of the Boston Society of Natural History and which was discontinued in 1886.

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