No social demands interfered with a calm and dignified contemplation of the Rose-beetle, melolontha subspinosa, and his scandalous "Life History"; there was no chatter of girls from hall and stairway to distract the loftier inspirations that possessed him, no intermittent soprano noises emitted by fluttering feminine fashion, no calflike barytones from masculine adolescence to drive him to the woods, where it was always rather difficult for him to focus his attention on printed pages.
"The Danger Mark"
Robert W. Chambers
Had he not made preparations of the very coleoptera the Scarabee studied so exclusively,-preparations which the illustrious Swammerdam would not have been ashamed of, and dissected a melolontha as exquisitely as Strauss Durckheim himself ever did it?
"The Complete PG Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)