rHE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST
L.O.HOWARD

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS
THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK ■ BOSTON ■ CHICAGO • DALLAS
ATLANTA - SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
OF CANADA, Limited

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

THE STORY OF AN
ENTOMOLOGIST

Telling of the Life and Experiences
of the Writer

By
L. O. HOWARD

New Yor\ • /pjj

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

\

^

Copyright, 1933, by
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

All rights reserved — no part of this book may be
reproduced in any form without permission in writing
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes
to quote brief passages in connection with a review
written for inclusion in magazine or newspaper.

Set up and printed.
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY. 1933.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Introduction

E

iFTEEN years ago I used my spare time for several weeks in
writing about thirty thousand words in which I gave a sort of
record of my Hfe, but this was my personal story and I did it for
my daughters' reading. It so happened that once my mother
wrote, largely from her mother's dictation, the story of her
mother's life, and that later she wrote a long account of her
own. So this little story of mine, added to the two that my
mother did, carries the personal records and family incidents
through three generations, covering considerably more than a
hundred years, since my grandmother was born in 1800. There
are a lot of things in the three stories that might be of interest
to others, and if anyone wishes to consult these manuscripts
for historical or other reasons, I am sure that my daughters will
be very willing.

And now there comes a somewhat imaginative publisher who
thinks that "The Story of an Entomologist" might be done in
a very readable way. He has evidently read about some of the
big and interesting things that have been done by entomologists
and that have come from the study of insects by men who have
devoted their lives to this study. I am sure that he has no interest

[v]

INTRODUCTION

in my personal life, but he seems sure that "there is a story
there," and I am inclined to agree with him.

Some people would read such a story to know just what kind
of odd creature an entomologist usually is. Many reminiscent
books have been written recently by scientific men, including
naturalists. Two of these are quite charming and seem to have
been widely read — those by David Fairchild and Frank M. Chap-
man, the one a botanist and the other a famous student of birds.
No entomologist has ever told in book form of his life experi-
ences, yet surely there is much romance and even drama in the
lives of many of these men.

The trouble is that most of them have been men who have
lived and worked in such a way that the world has not known
of them. Until recently their pursuits were thought to be trivial.
Insects were deemed small and insignificant — not worth the
attention of a man in his right mind. Until quite recently many
men were ashamed to let their friends know that they were
studying insects and making collections.

Almost all of this is changed, as we shall see. But an entomol-
ogist is still a queer fellow in the eyes of many. And it must be
confessed that many entomologists are queer fellows in the eyes
of everyday conventional people. I remember that once many
years ago a group of us were standing at luncheon time under
the trees behind the building of the old Department of Agri-
culture at Washington when a tall, rather extraordinary-looking
individual with pompadour hair and a strange two-pointed beard
and not too careful dress (although perfecdy neat) came out of
an adjoining building.

"Who is that?" asked one of the bystanders.

"Oh, that's just one of Howard's entomological freaks," replied
one of the group (he was a botanist, by the way).

Thus he spoke carelessly and laughingly of August Busck,

[vi]

INTRODUCTION

a Dane by birth and education, who has carried out most
valuable investigations for us in foreign lands, and who is today
a world authority on an important group of insects.

Very likely people might find the story of an entomologist—
that is, an average, typical entomologist— interesting; but the
particular entomologist who writes this, being perhaps more like
the average man than is the average entomologist, has had the
good luck to be thrown into positions in which he has been able
to draw forcible attention to the insect problem, since he has
in the course of the years taken part (usually a very small part)
in many investigations that have been successful and have proved
useful to all humanity. So why should not his life be interesting?

In the pages that will follow I hope to say many things that
are far from entomology. I bring them in because I think them
interesting, and because, after all, they help to prove my point,
which is that an entomologist is very much like other people.
The telling of these stories, relating as they do to an interesting
period of sixty-odd years and to many interesting people and
events, shows that he may be like other men. And then, too,
many of these rather gossipy notes would be lost if I did not put
them down here. Possibly this would not be a very great loss,
but the reader will decide.

[vii]

Contents

Introduction page v

Chapter I page i

Parents, their birth in Central New York — Scientific ancestors of
scientific men — Boyhood in Ithaca, New York — The Promethia Co-
coons at Jamaica, Long Island — The Beginning of a collection of
insects at Ithaca — The founding, by the boys, of the Ithaca Natural
History Society — Early schooling — Death of my father — Entering
Cornell University — First meeting with J. H. Comstock — More about
boy life — The catching of the first Luna Moth — The non-resident
lecturers in the early days at Cornell — Louis Agassiz — The first ap-
pearance of the European Cabbage Butterfly in Central New York —
C. V, Riley's lecture at Cornell — Graduation from the University —
Choice of career — Post-graduate year preparatory to Medicine —
Cornell in its early days, and more about life on Lake Cayuga — Frank
Cushing at Cornell, Philadelphia, Washington — A walking trip to
Eastern Pennsylvania — An ofifer to go to Washington as an assistant
entomologist in the Department of Agriculture — S. H. Gage and the
post-graduate year — Studies in the anatomy of insects in addition to
the pre-medical studies — Riley's bad break in anatomy — Later years
at Cornell as trustee — The dropping of the School of Forestry —
President Schurman — Ithaca of later years — Anecdote of Hiram
Corson — Professor Prentiss and the Master's degree — Social life in

[ix]

CONTENTS

small towns, how it centers around the churches — Small town church
life transferred to large cities.

Chapter II page 25

Work on the University farm and in the library — Departure for
Washington — Visit in New York on the way — Journey from New
York to Washington, and the old train of mules in Baltimore —
J. McK. Borden and his stepfather and mother. Colonel and Mrs.
Carter — First impressions of the old Department of Agriculture —
First glimpse of C. V. Riley — ^Theodor Pergande and his attempts
to write fine English — Disappointment at being used first as a clerk —
The first manual of silk culture — The system in vogue at that time
of credit to assistants — The resignation of C. V. Riley and the ap-
pointment of J. H. Comstock — The way the Comstocks and I lived
and worked — First field trip — Congressional influence and appoint-
ments to public service — The consternation of office-holders at Cleve-
land's first election — Clerks' contributions to campaign funds — The
great change with the coming of the Civil Service Law — Talks with
General Black and John R. Proctor on state representation — Begin-
ning of my study of the parasitic Hymenoptera — C. H. Fernald and
his summer in Washington — The way he handled beggars — A story
about Controller Trenholm — Garfield's election and Riley's reappoint-
ment — Doubt about staying in Washington — Sent on a field trip to
Illinois — The sight of Garfield's assassination in the railway station —
Trip to Savannah, Georgia, to study rice insects — Colonel Scriven
and an anecdote of the fall of Savannah during the Civil War — A
somewhat earlier trip to Louisiana, with anecdotes of a travelling
Englishman — His account of the journey in his book — Investigation
of sugar cane insects — Joe Jefferson's place in the Bayou Teche
country — Somewhat later field trip to Huntsville, Alabama — Ex-
traordinary work of parasites on the Army Worm — The 1884 stay in
New Orleans — Victor Bero and his restaurant — Later work under
Riley — ^The beginning of the journal "Insect Life" — The introduc-
tion of the Australian Ladybird into California — The disputed credit
for this work — More about life in Washington — Music and a sudden
cessation in the pleasure of listening to it — Riley's resignation and
my appointment as Chief in 1894 — Early studies in Medicine — The

[X]

CONTENTS

old Colombian Medical College— A. F. A. King and his early ideas
about malaria — The old faculty — A hospital anecdote — Later medical
studies and later vivid interest in medical work.

Chapter III page 57

Other occupations in Washington in the early days — The Scientific
Societies and their beginnings — The old high bicycle and the Capitol
Bicycle Club — The men who rode — Other bicycle clubs — S. S. Mc-
Clure, Joseph Pennell — L. Warren Seely and one of his impromptu
poems — Whist at the White House — Washington at that time — Con-
gress — Blaine and Lamar — Logan, Vorhees and Edmunds — The pro-
portion of college bred men in Congress — A debate on the Geological
and Topographical Surveys — E. C. Manners and misquotations —
Another congressional incident — J. D. Cox — Early appropriations; a
story about Congressman Hatch — Another about Senator Warner
Miller — Congressman Wadsworth and his son, the Senator — The
hearings before the Committee on Agriculture — The Boll Weevil and
the committee — Burleson and Lamb — Congressmen and field labora-
tories — Congressional and political influence and appointments —
William E. Chandler and the Cosmos Club — Uncle Joe Cannon's
remark about the Club — Further about the Riley administration —
Story of the Hop Plant-louse.

Chapter IV page 75

The simple and inexpensive living of the young government workers
in Washington in the early i88o's — The small salaries of the young
scientific men — Rare chances for outside work — "The Youths' Com-
panion" — "The Century Dictionary" — Elliot Coues — New words in
the Dictionary — My supposed knowledge of Sanskrit — "The Standard
Dictionary" and "The New International Encyclopedia" — President
Taylor of Vassar — First lecture without manuscript, a Vassar incident
— The Low^ell Institute — A St. Botolph Club experience with Wilton
Lockwood — Married life — The Onteora Club--The wives of the
scientific men in Washington.

Chapter V ' page 90

Early interest in the natural control of pests — Beginning of study of
parasites — Especial study of parasites of cosmopolitan insects — A

[xi]

CONTENTS

catalogue of the recorded host-relations — The Australian Ladybird
and its success in California — Later successes in Hawaii, Italy, Fiji
and elsewhere — Work done in Washington — Cooperation with other
countries — Search for European insect enemies of the Gipsy Moth and
the Brown-tail Moth— Work in France, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Ger-
many and Russia — Fritz Wagner — Josef Jablonowski — Rene Oburthiir
—Andre Vuillet— Mistral— J. Henri Fabre— Theophile Gautier—
Marie Ruhl — Kiew — Waldemar Pospelow — Sebastopol and Simferopol
— Sigismond Mokrzecki— Bachtisserai — Mayor Maximoff's estate at
Balaklava— The Crimean War Museum— The Palace of the Khan of
the Crimea at Bachtisserai— The Coming of the World War— Mokr-
zecki again — Later work on Gipsy Moth parasites in Europe — So-
called American Blight — Aphelinus mali, its introduction into Europe
and throughout the world — The general subject — Albert Koebele —
W. F. Fiske — Frederick Muir — Fiske again.

Chapter VI page ii6

My very early observations on mosquitoes and the use of kerosene —
Malaria in Washington, open windows at night, and "Miasma" — The
malarial "flats" at Ithaca — Later use of kerosene in the Catskills and
publication in 1892 — Bulletin on household insects in 1896 and on
mosquitoes in 1898 — First life history of Anopheles worked out —
Consultations with Reed, Carroll and Lazear — Results of their work
— A book on mosquitoes in 1901 — The beginning of the four-volume
Carnegie monograph — The much later revision of the taxonomic por-
tion in one volume by Dyar — How Dyar became interested in mos-
quitoes — Walter Reed's chagrin at statements in the 1901 mosquito
book — Later articles and lectures — The Panama Canal and interview
with President Roosevelt — Gorgas and Le Prince at my office — An
extraordinary earlier coincidence in Canada — An anecdote of General
Gorgas — An anecdote of Dr. W. S. Thayer — Sir Ronald Ross and his
1905 visit to America — The Yellow Fever Mosquito at the St. Louis
World's Fair — Sir Rubert Boyce and Lord Mountmorris — Visit to
New Orleans at the close of the epidemic of 1905 — A Texas Yellow
Fever story — The Roman Campagna and Malaria — Angelo Celli and
a trip with him on the Campagna — Our "triumphal return" to Rome
— First call on Grassi — His Germanisms — Grassi after the War —

[xii]

CONTENTS

Visit with him to Fumacino — ^What he said about Ross — A Grassi
anecdote — His ideas on Pellagra and SimuHum and what he thought
of bat roosts — Medical Entomology in the World War — ^The House-
fly — Housefly discussion at two big functions at Washington.

Chapter VII page 144

Early silk culture in the United States — Experiments at Washington
— Philip Walker — The McKinley Tariff Bill; effort to introduce a
tariff on raw silk — Later experimental work under Secretary James
Wilson — Miss Henrietta Aiken Kelly — Trip to Europe in 1902 to
study the industry and to buy reeling machinery — Silk culture on an
old Italian estate — Abandonment of department work — Guy Wilkin-
son's experiments in California — The present experiment at Ensenada,
California.

Chapter VIII page 155

Rapid growth of the Service at Washington — The San Jose Scale, the
Mexican Cotton Boll Weevil and the discovery of the transfer of dis-
ease by insects — The broadening of the concept ofinsect potentialities
— Certain contrasts — Executive work interrupting personal investiga-
tions — The difficulties of the Field Assistant — Visits of the Chief to the
field laboratories — Dudley Moulton and the Pear Thrips — The value
of these visits to the workers — Their value before congressional com-
mittees — The Klamath Falls incident — Annual reports — Newspaper
publicity — F. W. Clarke — How the newspapers improved in their
treatment of science — The old days of the Huxley lectures — F. G.
Novy and his Chicago address — Theodore Waters as press secretary
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science — E. E.
Slosson, Mr. Scripps, W, E. Ritter and Science Service — Austin H.
Clark and the present press service of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science.

Chapter IX page 169

Unintentional interchange of injurious insects between countries
through commerce — Early appreciation of this fact — Action of foreign
governments — California's early quarantine law — Addresses in 1895,
urging necessity of national protection — Study of foreign pests liable to

[ xiii ]

CONTENTS

be introduced — Mexican Orange Maggot — 1898 trip to Mexico — A
suspected person who turned out to be very innocent and friendly —
Parodi at San Jose de Guaymas — No Orange Maggots in Sonora —
International episode at Hildalgo on a later trip — The incident of the
Governor of Oaxaca — Dr. Liceaga and his inspection force — Patriotic
incident at Cordoba — School histories — Yellow Fever at Laredo in
1904 — Yaqui prisoners on way to Yucatan — A, L. Herrera and his
troubles during the Revolution — Alfonso Dampf — Late Cooperation
with Mexico — Eflforts to pass a Plant Quarantine Law in the United
States — Efforts in 1912 to strengthen European inspection services —
Passage of the United States law — Individual credit to C. L. Marlatt —
International conference at Wageningen — The Plant Quarantine
Service — Difficulties of the Service — The Rice Stem-borer as an ex-
ample — Present conditions.

Chapter X page 184

International congresses — The Congress of Arts and Sciences at
St. Louis in 1904 — Simon Newcomb — Henri Poincare — ^The Inter-
national Congress of Zoology at Boston in 1907 — Charles Sedgwick
Minot and his dinner at the St. Botolph Club — The German pro-
fessor at New York — Secretary James Wilson and Ralphael Blanchard
at Washington — The International Congress of Agriculture at Vienna
in 1907 — Franz Josef — The arguments of the bird lovers — Monsieur
de Meline — The International Commission of Agriculture — Its meet-
ing in Paris — The Marquis de Vogue — Monsieur de Tisserand — The
Lamarck Centenary Fete in Paris in 1908 — Notable men present —
The Kiinckel d'Herculais incident — The incident of Dr. von Graff —
The Darwin Centenary in England in 1907 — Dr. Arthur Shipley —
The Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Royal Society in
1912 — Services at Westminster Abbey — The opening meeting — The
incident of the German delegation — Banquet at Guild Hall — Speech
of the Prime Minister — Speech of Lord Morley — Garden parties at
Syon House and Windsor Castle — International Congress of Ento-
mology at Oxford in 19 12 — E. B. Poulton — G. B. Grosvenor — The
section on applied entomology — Anton Handlirsch — International
Congress of Economic Entomologists and Phytopathologists at
Wageningen, Holland in 1923 — ^Attitude of the Germans — Discus-

[xiv]

CONTENTS

sion of the title of the congress — The European use of the term
phytopathology — The International Olive Fly Conference in Madrid,
1923 — The earlier incident of the visit of the Principessa Brancaccio
to Washington — Count Montornes — The International Congress of
Agriculture at Paris in 1923 — Secretary Wallace's comment on my
speech — The Pan-Pacific Conservation Conference in Honolulu in
1924 — Internationalism and Sovietism — David Starr Jordan — Sir
Joseph Carruthers — Accident on the w^ay to Europe in 1925 — The
Glasgov^^ Nursing Home — The Third International Congress of Ento-
mology at Ziirich in 1925 — The International Congress of Zoology at
Budapest in 1927 — Dr. G. Horvath — The Fourth International Con-
gress of Entomology at Ithaca in 1928 — Some Pan-American Con-
gresses at Washington — Dr. Zort and the Hygienic Congress.

Chapter XI page 218

The American Association for the Advancement of Science — Early
officers — Election as Permanent Secretary in 1898 — Migratory meet-
ings — The Toronto meeting of the British Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science in 1898 — Lord Kelvin, Lord Lister and Sir John
Evans — Anecdote of Lord Lister — Sir John Evans and archaeology —
The Red Lion Club — General Greely's initiation — The New Orleans
meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
in 1905 — Dr. Wiley's speech at the Boston Club Smoker — Investigation
by the Postal Service — James J. McLaughlin's speech — The Denver
meeting — John Hayes Hammond's dinner — Hammond's speech, years
later, at an engineers' dinner in Washington — Franklin K. Lane's fol-
lowing speech — The Toronto meeting of 1921 — Professor William
Bateson's lecture — An anecdote about Bateson — Charles W. Eliot's
presidency at the Pittsburgh meeting during the War — An incident of
this meeting — The Boston meeting in 1899 — Josiah Quincy's dinner
— W. G. Farlow — ^Farlow's address at New Orleans.

Chapter XII page 233

Concerning Presidents of the United States — Rutherford B. Hayes
and Mrs. Hayes — A White House incident of his administration —
President Garfield — His murder — Theodore Roosevelt — Roosevelt's
address before the Biological Society of Washington while he was a

[XV]

CONTENTS

member of the U. S. Civil Service Commission— W. Hallett Phillips
and his death— The dedication of Rudyard Kipling's poem, "The
Red Gods"— The Panama Canal incident— The first conservation con-
ference—William J. Bryan's comments and President Roosevelt's reply
—The Pan-American Health Congress and the introduction of the
delegates to President Roosevelt— Colonel Roosevelt and Sleeping
Sickness— Ralphael Blanchard's conversation with Colonel Roosevelt
in Paris— Colonel Roosevelt's final call on Kaiser Wilhelm— GifJord
Pinchot's story— President Taft— Dinner conversation with George
W. Wickersham— President Taft's address to the American Associa-
tion for the Advancement of Science— Woodrow Wilson — Early meet-
ing at the Hamilton Club in Brooklyn, and his speech on that occasion
— Warren G. Harding — The first conference of Chiefs of Bureaus-
Speech by Charles G. Dawes, first director of the budget— President
Harding's support of a new Boll Weevil remedy — Dr. Sawyer— In-
cident of the birthday luncheon to Secretary Wallace — President
Hoover — His address while Secretary of Commerce on the Delights
of Fishing.

Chapter XIII page 253

The Cosmos Club of Washington — Comparison to other clubs —
Early membership — Why I joined — Distinguished visitors— The inci-
dent of Lord Kelvin and Senator Jo Hawley — Conversation at the Club
— ^The Wiley Scotch — Wiley and the New York dinner — Some billiard
room small talk— Paul Bardett— More about H. W. Wiley— The
chemical spelling match— The Club during the World War— Austin
H. Clark— Reception during the War— German-American members
of the Club— Dr. A. Caccini, his prognostications— L. P. DeBussy
and his war stories — Major Plotz and his stories — Herbert Quick —
John H. Wigmore and his book on higher education in France-
Maurice Francis Egan— William Kent— A. B. MacCallum— R. V. V.
Sewell and his offer to the Club— Frank P. Millet and his work— His
ability as a linguist — An incident of his service at the U. S. Legation
in Rome — The Millet Memorial meeting— Story of Millet and E. A.
Schwarz — ^The Luncheon Club of Secretaries of national organizations
— ^The discussion of Lincoln Memorials at this club and Millet's final
words — Brander Matthews' story of the visit to the Millets by Lawrence

[xvi]

CONTENTS

Hutton and his wife — Dangerfield and the Spanish Mackerel — New
England cooking — Arctic explorers.

Chapter XIV page 283

Alexander Graham Bell — The probable origin of his famous
Wednesday evenings — What was done at those evenings and how it
was done — Langley and his flying machine — Bell's interest in flying —
His tetrahedral kite — McCurdy, Orville Wright, Santos Dumont and
Glenn Curtiss — C. M. Manly — Incident of the Contessa Montessori —
Dr. Bell's three cigars a day — Physicians and tobacco — The origin of
the Walter Reed Memorial — The wide reputation of the Wednesday
evenings — Echoes from France and Hawaii — Spencer Miller and his
remarks — The World War and the discussion after the United States
entered it — Duca Litta's letter — Remarks of Meyer, the agricultural
explorer — Dr. Bell's character — James Harvey Robinson on such men
— Voltaire on the inventor — Personal acquaintance with five genera-
tions of the family — Herbert Putnam and the Round Table Club —
The reunion after the World War — Remarks of Roland Cotton Smith
and M. Jusserand — A meeting with Dr. Bell's great-granddaughter
in Japan in 1931.

Chapter XV page 300

The Clover-seed Midge — Theodor Pergande's story — Spiritualism —
Sir Alfred Russell Wallace — Bernard E. Fernow and the School of
Forestry at Cornell — Poulton and Fernow climb a mountain — The
Capri Fig Story — The two Wileys and the Legion of Honor — The
Commissioners and the Secretaries of Agriculture — General Le Due —
Sir Basil Zaharoff — An episode concerning Nicolas Cholodkowsky —
Credit to Dr. Holland for a story in "The Insect Menace" — End of
ofl&cial career — Colonel Charles E. Davis — Recent book — ^The Celebra-
tion of the Centenary of the French Entomological Society — The
Fifth International Congress of Entomology in Paris.

Index page 327

[ xvii ]

!

chapter I

I

F THERE be such a thing as an average boy, I believe I was one.
My father, Ossian Gregory Howard, was born in Delhi, New
York, and my mother, Lucy Dunham Thurber, was born in the
same little town two years later. My father studied law with a
law firm at Ithaca, and after he was admitted to the bar he mar-
ried and started for the west with his young wife to begin life
in a new and growing country. They settled at Rockford, Illinois,
fifty miles or more west of Chicago, and I was born near the
close of their first year there. Then the law firm with which he
had studied offered him a partnership, and the young father,
mother and baby went back east to Ithaca, and there I grew up
and went to school.

My friend, C. B. Davenport, the head of the Eugenics Labora-
tory at Cold Spring Harbor, is very keen on the subject of the
genealogy of men of science and has collected the data concern-
ing all of the members of the National Academy of Science, as
well as of many other scientific men, in the effort to find out
any evidences of heredity in scientific tastes. Such evidence in
my own case is very slight. My paternal ancestors were for the
most part physicians and preachers, with an occasional farmer,
and the same holds for my maternal ancestors. However, my

[i]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

paternal grandfather, Dr. Calvin Howard of Delhi, was an
amateur astronomer and founded a local Natural History So-
ciety in the 1840's. Moreover, my maternal great-grandmother
was Lois Pickering, coming from the famous Pickering family
of Massachusetts, in which there has been, here and there, a man
of science, notably the late Professor E. C. Pickering of Har-
vard, the noted astronomer and member of many foreign scien-
tific academies, and Dr. Charles Pickering of Philadelphia (of
the class of 1826 at Harvard), who was prominent in the early
days of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. He was
greatly interested in the geographical distribution of plants and
animals, and travelled much.^

Other instances of this sort are lacking as far as I know. Even,
however, had there been no ancestry of scientific accomplish-
ment, it is the most natural thing in the world that a boy brought
up in the Central New York environment should be attracted to
nature, and many of my boyhood friends were so attracted. But
that I happened to be the only one who followed one aspect of
nature study as a pursuit was more or less accidental.

Ithaca is at the head of a beautiful lake, and is in a valley sur-
rounded by hills, except on the lake side, and these hills in my
time were rather well-wooded. The boys rowed and sailed on
the lake, camped in the woods in huts that they made of poles
and the dense foliage of the hemlock, and fished in all the trib-
utary streams. Some of them collected birds' eggs and studied

* Lacking near ancestors of scientific attainment, I have been a little more
fortunate with men who have come into the public eye in other ways. Jacob M.
Howard, United States Senator for Michigan, and one of the founders of the
Republican Party, was my grandfather's first cousin. General O. O. Howard, of
Civil War fame, belonged to the same line. The former President and Chief
Justice, William Howard Taft, was rather proud of his middle name, which is that
of his grandmother, who was a cousin of my grandfather. The present Secretary
of State, Henry L. Stimson, by the way, is my mother's grandnephew.

[2]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

birds; one or two others became interested in land shells; but
that was as far as any specific interest in natural history went
until, when I was seven or eight years old, I visited an aunt, Mrs.
Candace Wheeler, who lived near Jamaica, Long Island. There
one winter I met the children of some neighbors named Stewart,
and two of the boys were collecting cocoons. I became interested
at once when they told me that beautiful moths would issue
from these cocoons in the late spring. I took some of the cocoons
home with me to Ithaca, and was entranced when the moths
(Crecopia and Promethia) burst out the following May. From
that time on I collected moths and butterflies. Rather strangely,
my mother and father encouraged me. They bought me a little
book by Mrs. Mary Treat called "The Butterfly Hunters," and
when I was ten years old my father gave me the wonderful
book by T. W. Harris — "Insects Injurious to Vegetation."

Boys are imitative, and occupations of that sort are attractive,
so a dozen of us organized The Ithaca Natural History Society.
We had weekly meetings and read papers and talked over many
puzzling things. In the meantime Cornell University had been
started, and soon there was established a University Natural
History Society. But the meetings of that society were not half
so interesting as were those of our little group. We made no at-
tempt to build up a society collection, but nearly every one of
the boys had his own private collection, and the collector's spirit
was almost as intense as that shown by many older people in
many different directions. This little society lasted till some of
us were ready to enter college, and even afterwards.

My father was not a college man. In the old-fashioned way
he studied law in a law office, and was admitted to the Bar on
examination. He thought that a college education was not neces-
sary, that it was in a way a waste of time, and it had been his
intention to place me in his office as a student at the age of six-

[3]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

teen. In the meantime I had done fairly well at school (The
Ithaca Academy). About 1871 I got into some difficulty with the
Principal, was feruled, and indignantly left school. My father
took my side enthusiastically and put me into an excellent private
school of which Mr. William Kinne was Headmaster. It was
really a Latin school, but taught mathematics and other things,
and was an accepted preparatory school for the universities.

Then suddenly, in the night, in March, 1873, my father died,
at the age of forty. He left my mother with three boys to care
for and to educate. I was fifteen, my brother George ten, and
my brother Frank six. She took up the burden bravely. Her
financial means were comparatively small, although she had
some valuable real estate, and a big house that my father had
built two years before.

Both father and mother had associated much with the young
professors of the University and their families, and my mother
realized that I should enter the University immediately. So on
my sixteenth birthday I passed the entrance examination and
registered as a freshman in September, 1873.

I entered in the course of Civil Engineering, although I wanted
to study Natural History. My mother's professorial friends, how-
ever, assured her that there was no future in Natural History,
except possibly an underpaid professorship in some small college.
Civil Engineering was then very much in the public eye. Great
railroads were being built, American engineers were being sent
to South America and all over the world to build railroads, and
the engineering courses were filled with students.

It proved to be an interesting experience, but when I got into
Differential Calculus it was too much for me, and I failed in my
examinations. Then, without telling my mother, I took the
studies I hked best. I was J. H. Comstock's first laboratory
student, and I spent many hours in his laboratory. I studied

[4]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

botany, geology, and chemistry, and also went in for history and
— perhaps especially — the French, Italian and German languages.

I had first met Comstock before entering college. I was out
collecting and for the first time had found the very beautiful
Huntera butterfly, flying rather abundantly in a field of blossom-
ing buckwheat. A strange young man walked up and said to
me, "C-c-catching insects?" I replied affirmatively, and he said,
"M-m-my name is Comstock, and I t-t-teach entomology in the
college. C-c-c-come and see me." This was the beginning of a
lifelong friendship. I went to see him, gave him insects for his
newly started collection, and read his books, for the first time
making the acquaintance of Lyonnet, Reaumur, Westwood,
Kirby and Spence, Rennie, John Curtiss, Fitch, Walsh, and a lot
of others; for Comstock was already beginning a library in en-
tomology which has since become one of the most important
in America.

But we have gone ahead too rapidly. It is true that this is the
story of an entomologist, but it is also the story of an average
boy. From what has been said before, it is not to be supposed
that the boy coUector of insects has anything more than the same
collector's spirit that always shows itself with boys, whether they
gather postage stamps or old coins or birds' eggs or match-boxes,
or glittering things as a jackdaw does. My real interests were in
baseball, rowing, sailing on the lake, camping in the woods, and
boy games of all kinds. I had to practise on the piano, and what a
struggle it was when the other boys were playing baseball almost
under the window!

In the collecting of insects there was a rivalry among the boys.
I remember how jealous I was when one of them caught the first
Red Admiral. When we saw Sonrel's wonderful woodcut of the
Luna Moth in Harris we were all agog to see who should catch
the first one.

[5]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

One day when we were in swimming one of the boys, Henry
White, the son of the Presbyterian clergyman, dressed first, took
his elaborate butterfly net, and started off into the woods. My
brother George, who had no butterfly net, and whose collecting
apparatus consisted of an old straw hat, followed him. As I was
leisurely dressing, I heard yells of delight in the woods beyond
and voices crying excitedly, "A Luna! A Luna!" "Thunder!" I
said to myself. "Henry has caught the first one." Without waiting
to draw on my shoes, I started after them, and when I got there,
beheld the kid brother on his hands and knees, with the Luna
under his straw hat, while Henry with his expensive butterfly
net stood by trembling with jealous rage!

In those early days the University wisely drew in a number of
prominent non-resident lecturers. Among them was the elder
Agassiz, and as a boy I heard several of his lectures. I was not
so much interested in his subject, which mainly concerned sea
forms of life, but I was greatly interested in the man himself
and in his rapid and picturesque way of presenting his subject.
Of course this was before the days of lantern slides, and while
the lectures were profusely illustrated, it was all done with crayon
on a great blackboard. And for the first time I saw a man draw
with a bit of chalk in each hand, using both simultaneously. It
was arresting; it was beautiful! And how much easier it was to
draw a bi-symmetrical figure with two hands than with one!
Years later I saw the late E. S. Morse (a student of Agassiz)
do the same thing and even better. And still later C. V. Riley,
but hardly with the same success, although he sketched normally
in an exquisite way.

Before each lecture Agassiz allowed the students to ask ques-
tions for a few minutes. I remember with great joy that a fellow
named Charley Raymond stood up very impressively one night
and said, "Professor, is there such a place as Hell?" The rotund

[6]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

and genial Swiss smiled, shrugged his shoulders and answered:
"I wish I knew!"

I am sure that in those boyhood days I did not appreciate the
importance of studying insects from the life history point of view,
and not at all from the economic. In fact, although I subse-
quently gave my collection to Cornell University, I believe that
I made only one observation of any especial interest. It happened
in this way: I spent the summer of 1870 or 1871 (I forget which)
at my grandfather's in Delhi, Delaware County, New York, and
while there collected butterflies, incidentally interesting one or
two of the local boys. There I found in some number a white
butterfly which I identified in Harris as Pontia oleracea, and
Harris stated that its larva fed on cabbage and other cruciferous
plants. I took a dozen of these butterflies back with me to Ithaca,
where the species had not been found, and traded them with
some of the other boys. The next summer I wanted some more
for trading purposes, so I wrote to Charley Frost, a Delhi boy,
and asked him to send me some, since I knew that they had been
very common down there the summer before. To my great sur-
prise, he sent me back an entirely diflferent species. It was white
like the other, but it had some black spots on the wings.

Now, as it happens, this incident fixes the date at which the
European Cabbage Butterfly (Pieris rupee) reached that part of
New York. It had been accidentally imported at Montreal, Can-
ada, a few years before, and its rapid spreading over the United
States was a matter of much interest to naturalists and to cab-
bage-growers.

This was all written up later by S. H. Scudder in an important
paper, and he was able to fix the date of the entry of the species
into the lower Catskill regions by this boyhood observation by
Charley Frost and myself. So that even small boys sometimes hit
upon a good thing.

[7]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

It seems rather astonishing to me now that, although Cornell
was founded upon somewhat utilitarian lines, and included a
College o£ Agriculture, the courses in entomology had very
little reference to possible practical applications. But perhaps
this was not to be wondered at, for, aside from the not very
well known writings of Harris, Fitch and Walsh, almost nothing
was being done in this direction. In fact, the science of applied
entomology was only just beginning.

There was a young man down in Missouri named C. V. Riley,
who had been publishing a few annual reports on noxious insects
and had created quite a sensation, partly by the admirable way
in which he presented his subject, and partly by the extraor-
dinarily clever illustrations. In 1871 or 1872 Professor Comstock
managed to have Riley invited to come to Ithaca to deliver two
or three non-resident lectures. We boys of the Natural History
Society attended in a body. We were much disappointed in the
lectures. We cared nothing about agriculture, and were inter-
ested only in the strange things about insects. Some of the
farmers who came were disappointed because the lectures were
not practical enough to suit them. And some of the professors
who came out of curiosity were outraged because this young man
ventured to criticize the recently published classification by
Packard, a representative of the New England School, and a
student of Louis Agassiz, then in the height of his fame. The one
thing that pleased all of us was Riley's extraordinary ability as
a blackboard artist.

Looking back at the college days, between September, 1873
and June, 1877, when I took my Baccalaureate degree, I see very
well that entomology was not my principal interest. I played
baseball on the class team, and football as well, rowed on the
crew of the Tom Hughes Boat Club, and entered into many of

[8]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

the undergraduate activities. As pointed out in an earlier para-
graph, I took the studies I Hked, and indeed I have found since
that the studies that I chose of my own voHtion have been of
much use to me — I hke to think much more so than any of the
prescribed courses would have been. But when it came to gradu-
ation, it was a somewhat different story. The Faculty Committee
insisted that I should round matters up, and I had to do some
intense cramming in physics before I was given my B.S. When it
came to a thesis, however, I went back to my first love and
prepared a rather elaborate treatise on the "Respiratory System
of the Larva of Corydalis cornuta," an aquatic insect largely used
by bass fishermen as bait, and often known by the curious name
of Hellgrammite.

And now came the question of career. I wanted to be a
teacher of natural history, but the men in the Faculty who
were friends of my mother told her that it would be foolish to
rely on anything of that sort, and advised her to place me in
line for a medical career. As this probably would have been my
second choice, I entered the University for a post-graduate course
in studies preparatory to medicine, taking up histology, chemistry
and advanced botany (including what was then known of my-
cology, and what was then beginning to be known as bacteri-
ology). And I also took up comparative anatomy. I entered
upon all these studies with enthusiasm and learned a lot. Dear
old Professor S. H. Gage and I, working together in Burt G.
Wilder's laboratory, learned a great deal and enjoyed every
minute of our association. Gage had graduated with me and
was now instructor. We had many funny experiences, for ex-
ample: Gage had seen in a microscope journal that a new
reagent — osmic acid — had been found to be an excellent stainer
of nerve tissues, and he promptly ordered an ounce. When the
bill came in it proved to be something like one hundred dollars,

[9]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

which wrecked the laboratory appropriation for a year. We
dissected dogs and cats, and later still-born babies which were
sent to us from New York, and we had many a dirty mess in
our early efforts to inject in the veins and arteries colored plaster-
of-paris in liquid form.

The Cornell University of my undergraduate days seemed
wonderful to us small-town people, and yet in the light of its
subsequent growth, and in comparison with the many great
universities which have sprung up since in the United States,
it now seems to have been rather a primitive affair. Still there
were many things connected with it that made it stand out
prominently and brought upon it a great deal of criticism and
abuse. In the first place it was non-sectarian, and that was almost
unheard of in American collegiate institutions. And then it
introduced many innovations in its line of studies. Ezra Cornell,
its founder, was a self-made, self-educated man, who had big
but rather indefinite ideas. His oft-quoted statement, "I would
found an institution where any man can find instruction in any
study," was high-sounding, rather grandiloquent, and, in a way,
rather naively stupid, but it was very impressive to lots of us.
In the early Faculty there were men who had been chosen
for such things as a knowledge of Sanskrit, for instance, although
I do not remember that anyone ever took any instruction in
Sanskrit. However, all this has been written up again and again,
and the controversies of that time are now matters of history.
In spite of all its crudities, there was a great deal that was sound
and fine about the University in those days, and the fact that
Andrew D. White was its first President, and the other fact
that no less a person than Professor Goldwin Smith, who had
recently left the Regius Professorship of History at Oxford, and
had come over to Canada, came down to Ithaca and gave annual

[lo]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

courses of lectures, and eventually left a large share of his fortune
to the institution, speak more for the ideals and the atmosphere
than any amount of argument.

I have indicated my interest in many other things besides
entomology. My summer vacations were spent largely in camp-
ing on the shores of Lake Cayuga. In the summer of 1876 I saw
the intercollegiate boat races on Lake Saratoga, where, inci-
dentally, Cornell won the 'Varsity race, the Freshman race and
the single sculls against Yale, Harvard, Columbia and eight or
ten other universities. And later in the same summer I went to
the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia — an extremely broad-
ening and interesting experience for a boy who had never left
Central New York before, except for occasional visits to New
York City.

There is an interesting little story connected with this Ex-
position. There was a boy named Frank Cushing who came to
Cornell in 1875 and joined our Natural History Society. He was
a keen observer, and was especially interested in archeology,
notably the archaeology of the American Indian. He had an
extraordinary aptitude for finding Indian relics. For example, one
day he and I were looking out of the upper windows of one of
the university buildings across the valley to the western hills,
two miles or more away, and he pointed out a certain spot on
the hillside and said to me: "By George! I'm sure there must
have been an Indian camp at that spot." Next day he went over
there alone and returned at night with arrowheads and other
Indian relics that proved the accuracy of his long-range judg-
ment.

In the winter of 1875 to 1876 the Smithsonian Institution sent
out letters to persons interested in Indian relics, and asked them
to contribute to the exhibit that would be made by the Smith-
sonian at the Exposition. Frank Cushing sent in a wonderful lot

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

of things, and in the spring of 1876 he was asked to go to Phila-
delphia to help in the installation of the exhibit. When he arrived
everything was in confusion, and even the floors of some of the
buildings had not been laid. In walking through Machinery Hall
the toe of his boot struck a bit of stone projecting from the
earthen floor. No one knows how many boots had hit this ob-
struction, but Gushing dug around it and exhumed the old
object, which proved to be a very remarkable Indian pestle. In
fact, he proved so interesting and so apt and so well informed
that the Smithsonian took him away from his college course, and
he went to Washington with the exhibit at the end of the Expo-
sition. That was Frank Cushing's chance, and, as we all know,
he developed into one of the most remarkable students of the
American Indian that the United States has ever produced. He
got to know the Zufiis, that extraordinary tribe in the South-
west, and in fact was adopted into the tribe.

I think that I should mention one more little expedition. In
the late summer of 1877 a half dozen of us started south on a
walking trip. We had intended to explore the coal-mining region
of eastern Pennsylvania. When we reached Towanda we were
already footsore, and, finding there the eastern branch of the
Susquehanna river, we bought a flat-bottomed boat for four
dollars, cut ourselves out some paddles from stolen fence-boards,
loaded our packs and supplies in the boat, and cruised for a large
part of the rest of our journey. We cooked our own meals on
shore at camp-fires, and spent the nights in chance haymows.
We overturned at least once, and had many more or less com-
monplace adventures which were very exciting to our inexperi-
ence. There is no doubt that we looked like tramps. We indulged
in a dinner at a litde hotel at Pittston and were served by a
pretty country girl. One of us passed some chaffing remark to
her, and she flushed and ran into the adjoining room, and we

[12]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

heard her say to the landlady that she would not have anything
more to do widi such a job. And the landlady said to her, "My
dear girl, when you took this place you must have known that
you would have to wait upon all sorts of impossible people."
That was rather a shock to half a dozen boys who had just
graduated from college. But another shock came later. I left the
party at Wilkes-Barre and went into a barber shop to get cleaned
up before taking the train for home. As I entered the shop, the
German barber greeted me enthusiastically and said, "Veil, old
man, how you vas?" I told him that I was very well and asked
him where he thought he had known me. "Oh, go 'vay, you
tended bar next my shop at de Exposition las' year."

To go back to the post-graduate year. I don't think I ever
enjoyed a year more than that one. There were eight or ten
advanced students in Gage's laboratory, and we worked with
unequalled enthusiasm, inspired largely by Gage, and I got many
ideas that have proved of great value to me, and so, I am sure,
did the other men. Most of them went into medicine.

At the end of the college year, in June, 1878, Professor C. V.
Riley, who had just been brought from Missouri to take the
post of Entomologist to the U. S. Department of Agriculture,
which had long been filled by the Englishman, Townend
Glover, was about to begin an investigation of the cotton cater-
pillar in the south. He knew Professor Comstock from having
given the non-resident lectures at Cornell referred to in an
earlier paragraph, and wrote to him offering him a job as Field
Agent in the southern cotton fields during the long summer
vacation. Comstock accepted, went South and spent most of the
summer in Selma, Alabama, sticking to his work indomitably
in spite of the fact that it was a yellow fever summer and con-
ditions throughout the southern states were very alarming.

[13]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

On his way through Washington in June, Professor Riley
asked him whether he had at Cornell an advanced student of
good appearance, fairly good manners and ability, who could
come to Washington as his assistant. Comstock was good enough
to recommend me, and in July I received a letter from Riley
asking me if I would come to Washington in the autumn at a
salary of one hundred dollars a month. Of course I wanted to
go, but I talked it over with my mother, my father's old law
partner. Judge Beers, and a number of the professors in the
University. They all said that I would never be rich and that
they doubted whether I would ever be able to marry and live
comfortably. The opinion that weighed most with me was
voiced by Professor Burt G. Wilder, who said to me that natural-
ists as a rule did not care at all about money, and not especially
about comfort; that naturalists were born and not made, and
that he thought on the whole that I was a born naturalist. And
so I accepted.

In early November, 1878, I started for Washington. My friends
gave me a send-ofi, and Professor Gage, going to the train, shook
hands in parting and said, "Now, Brother Howard, you and
I are going to devote our lives to science. We are not going to
let any confounded girls come between us and our work." I quite
endorsed this sentiment, and was greatly disappointed when, a
year later, I received Gage's wedding cards. The next time I
saw him I taxed him as a backslider, and he said, "Well, you
see. Brother Howard, I discovered what a great thing it is to
find someone who believes in you thoroughly and thinks that
you are quite the greatest person in the world." As a matter of
fact. Gage's married life was very happy. His wife was a true
helpmate, gave him a brilliant son, and herself did some bio-
logical work of high character. Her papers were signed Susanna
Phelps Gage. The son, Phelps Gage, who has grown into a

[14]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

physicist of great ability, was an eccentric youth. In the base-
ment of the so-called McGraw Building Dr. Wilder used to keep
the cats and dogs and other animals that were used in his labora-
tory, and the place was overrun with fleas. The janitor used to
roll sheets of sticky fly-paper about his ankles in cylindrical form,
with the sticky surface outside. This, of course, inflicted great
mortality on the fleas because of their pernicious habit of jump-
ing from the floor to one's ankles. Four-year old Phelps was
much intrigued by this process, and insisted on having his own
ankles similarly wrapped. But he carelessly brought his legs to-
gether, and then there was a howl for his father to come and
"unstick" him. Phelps had an ingenious way of simplifying the
English language. For example, when asked where his father
was, he replied, "He's gone to the Uni to study the mike." Mean-
ing, of course, that he had gone to the University to study the
microscope.

Just one more story about Phelps. Once, at a Rochester meet-
ing of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
his father was Chairman of the Section of Zoology, and the
delivery of his address as Chairman was listened to by a large
audience. The subject was an important one relating to physi-
ology. Phelps and his mother were present on seats near the
front. Phelps, who must have been about six or seven years of
age, was dressed in a bright blue suit. He was obviously much
concerned about the effect of his father's speech, because after
nearly an hour he climbed up in his seat and said in his clear,
childish voice, "Father, you've talked too long already."

November third, 1878, I cast my first vote. It was mid-term
elections, and I voted for Alonzo B. Cornell, the son of old Ezra,
for Governor. I had known Governor Cornell as a boy knows
an older man, and his son Charles had been a boyhood friend

[15]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

of mine. So also was Fred White, the son of the President of
the University. I should also state that another old boyhood
friend was Frank Finch, the oldest son of Francis M. Finch, later
Judge of the Supreme Court of New York, who during his
early days was a poet of much ability. When he was a student
at Yale he wrote a number of Yale songs, and at the close of the
Civil War he published that wonderful and beautiful poem,
"The Blue and the Gray," which has been recited at the Decora-
tion Day exercises all over the north on every thirtieth of May
since that time. It may interest many to know that Judge
Finch was at that time a Democrat in politics. In those days
of high political excitement he was even called a "Copperhead."
Therefore, the following will, I am sure, be interesting. In the
spring of 1866 I was walking up the hill one day towards our
house when I saw Judge Finch leaning against the fence and
sobbing. I was shocked and curious, and said, "Why, Mr. Finch,
what is the matter.?" He turned and choked out between sobs,
"Leal, the news has just come that President Lincoln has been
murdered."

Possibly I have said more than enough about the boyhood
days in Ithaca and the student life at Cornell. But it is hard to
leave that period. I suppose that everyone feels the same way
about that sort of thing. At the age of nearly seventy-five, writ-
ing, as it happens, at the present moment in Paris, and having
lived for much more than two-thirds of my life away from
Ithaca, my mind goes back constandy to college days. I often
think, for example, of stealing hickory nuts on the margin of
Ezra Cornell's big place, and I can visualize old Ezra himself,
with his long black coat and his stove-pipe hat and his big stick,
coming out of his house in a very bad temper to stop the pilfering.
The old gendeman (he wasn't so very old then, but he seemed
so to me) always wore a stove-pipe hat, and I smiled to myself

[16]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

when I heard that some famous artist had made a statue of him
that has been placed somewhere on the campus. It did not seem
to me that a stove-pipe hat belonged on an artistic statue, but it
was impossible for me to think of the old gentleman without
that headgear.

Of the pre-college days I think mainly of outdoor games and
of the boys with whom I played. Of the college days I think
also mainly of baseball, football and rowing, and of the boys
I knew in my own class and in the classes next to it. At that
time I was very greatly interested in the Ithaca Natural History
Society, which I had helped to found, and in my own collection
of insects, which gradually grew to contain a very fair local
representation of the butterflies, moths and grasshoppers. After
I entered college I found that Professor Comstock had brought
together a good collection of European books, many of them
old, and I read them hungrily. I was fascinated by Kirby and
Spence, by Rennie's "Insect Architecture," by Reamur's great
work, and especially by the wonderfully illustrated book by the
French writer Lyonnet on the anatomy of the Cossus. This insect
is a great wood-boring caterpillar that lives in the trunks of trees
in France. I was so fascinated by Lyonnet's engravings that I
began at once to study the anatomy of the large American cater-
pillars, and as a result, as already stated, my graduation thesis
was entitled, "The Respiratory System of the Larva of Corydalis
cornuta."

Apropos of this anatomical work, I am tempted to tell a story.
Professor Riley, good entomologist that he was in many ways,
had apparently never paid much attention to insect anatomy, and
when in one of his latest Missouri reports he published an
illustration of one of the almost transparent larvae of the Grape-
vine Phylloxera, the tracheal system was plainly indicated. In
his text he referred to it as the nervous system. During the

[17]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

winter of 1878-79, while I was working with Riley in Washing-
ton, Professor E. L. Mark of Harvard, then recently returned
from long studies in Germany, published a note in The Canadian
Entomologist, calling attention to this rather absurd error. When
he read this article Riley called me into his office and with the
Missouri report open at the figure in question asked me what
I thought of it. I said, "It is a very fine drawing, and I wonder
at the accuracy with which the tracheal system is drawn." He
thanked me and dismissed me.

It will be noticed that all along I had studied insects simply
because I liked to do so. It was not my prime interest, but it was
one of my prime interests. I had no idea of becoming a specialist,
and of course the future was all in the air. But everything that
I learned about them and, in fact, everything that I learned
about other things, was well worth while, and it has all proved
of much use to me at one time or another.

As a matter of fact, I never really worked until the post-
graduate year. It is true that I had very good marks on the
whole, but that is because I chose only the subjects that were
most interesting to me. But when the post-graduate year came
and I spent all my time on Natural History, Comparative
Anatomy, Histology and the subjects leading up to Medicine,
I regretted the hours that I could not spend in one laboratory
or another. My eyes were opened to the immense importance of
many fields. I must say, however, that the practical importance
of entomology did not appeal to me, and I studied insects simply
as fascinating forms of life. Of course I was not alone in this,
and no one at that time had the faintest idea of what insects
were then doing to the human race, and still less of what they
were likely to do in the future. In fact, when in the early summer
of 1878 Professor Riley began to correspond with me about going
to Washington I looked upon this suggested post as simply an

[18]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

agreeable way of earning a living until I could go into something
bigger and broader.

I think this will be a good place to tell what more I have to
say about Ithaca and Cornell. In 1884, after a short residence in
New York, my mother had married a second time. My step-
father, George William Harris, a Nova Scotian by birth, held
the position of librarian in Cornell University for many years,
succeeding the well-known Willard Fiske, the Dante and Ice-
landic scholar. So it was that I went back to Cornell annually
until the time of my mother's death in 1893.

After that, for a period of years, I did not return. But in 1900
I was elected to a five-year term as Alumni Trustee, and this
brought me back twice a year, in the autumn and in the spring,
to the Trustee meetings. In the meantime Andrew D. White had
resigned as president to become Ambassador to Germany. Charles
Kendall Adams of Ann Arbor was president for a few years,
when he resigned and was succeeded by Jacob G. Schurman,
who held the office for many years, including those of my term
as trustee. Schurman, also a Nova Scotian by birth, had studied
philosophy in Germany and had occupied the professorship of
philosophy at Cornell. He was a young, charming, high-minded,
almost spiritual personality. He married a delightful and wealthy
lady from New York and was very successful in his management
of the affairs of the University.

I went back to Ithaca to the first meeting of the Board of
Trustees in a very modest frame of mind, but impressed with
the responsibilities of my new office. I soon found that the Board
and the President were virtually controlled by the executive com-
mittee, composed of local residents, and I thought I saw that
their horizon was very limited. The out-of-town members of the
Board, coming to Ithaca only twice a year, had apparently litde

[19]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

weight. The President with his broader oudook carried tact to
the extreme, it seemed to me. On thinking it over, however, I
realized that he had to hve with these people, while we outsiders
did not. And, after all, things went well. But there were two
emergencies that aroused my rather strenuous opposition to the
local people. One was the typhoid epidemic in Ithaca and in the
University, and the other the abolition of the School of Forestry.
These are old stories, and it is unnecessary to retell them.
Typhoid dangers have largely passed away, and the School of
Forestry has been reestablished. The saddest thing about the
latter, however, was the dismissal of my old friend, B. E. Fernow.
I shall say something about this fine man and the Forestry
episode in later pages.

During his term of office as President of the University, Dr.
Schurman was twice given long leaves of absence, the first to
go as a commissioner to the Philippine Islands and the other to
serve as Minister to Greece. When he finally gave up his position
at Cornell, he was made Minister to China, and later, after we
had resumed diplomatic relations with Germany, ambassador to
that country. He filled all of these posts very acceptably.

After the expiration of my trusteeship in 1905, there followed
another long absence from Central New York. I went back to the
University at the time of the impressive semi-centennial of its
founding in 1918 and again to the semi-centennial of the gradua-
tion of my class in 1927. And once more I returned in 1928 as
President of the Fourth International Congress of Entomology
that was held at Ithaca, for the first time in the United States,
previous meetings having been held in Brussels, Oxford and
Zurich.

I think of Ithaca as the wooded village of my boyhood, and,
after all, it has not changed so greatly. It has more than trebled
in size, but that is nothing in our country of rapidly growing
cities. It is still densely shaded, its gardens are beautiful, its

[20]

K

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

people are still of the fine Central New York type, with an
added culture brought there by the University. But I think they
are rather too aware of the latter. Still, judging superficially from
my occasional visits, the atmosphere of the town has changed
somewhat. It is no longer quite so much of a country village,
but has become metropolitanized to a certain extent.

In Ithaca, they tell a story about Professor Hiram Corson that
is worth repeating. This man who was very much of a scholar,
and who had been with the University almost since its begin-
ning, was slender and solemn, and had a sepulchral voice. When
he allowed himself small conversation he did it in a sepulchral
way. The Professor had a keen sense of humor, but no trace
of it ever appeared in his face. When, after prolonged efforts, the
trolley line was first established, the service for a while was not
satisfactory. One day he joined a young lady standing on a corner
awaiting a car. She said, "Good morning. Professor Corson. I
am greatly annoyed: I have been waiting for a car for twenty
minutes." "Madame," replied Professor Corson in a deep voice
(he was an extraordinary elocutionist), "I have been waiting
for this car for twenty years."

Here is another anecdote about Professor Corson that has not
been told in print. My parents were giving an evening reception,
and I, a small boy, was allowed to stay up and stand around in
corners. Coffee was always served at these evening affairs, and I
happened to be standing near Corson and Professor Prentiss, the
botanist, also a tall, solemn and rather lugubrious person, and
I overheard this conversation between the two. "Corson," said
Prentiss, "what would life be without coffee?" Corson thought a
moment and said, as though plunged into infinite sadness, "Pren-
tiss, after all, what is life even with coffee?" That conversation
I have never forgotten. In fact, it rather saddened my life for
several days.

But later in student days and afterwards I found that both

[21]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

Corson and Prentiss were very good fellows. After I had been
in Washington for a few years, it occurred to me that I would
try for a Master's Degree, and I wrote to Cornell about it. They
replied that they would take my year's post-graduate study at
Ithaca into account as well as the papers I had published, but
that they would require a thesis and an examination in botany.
I submitted as a thesis a paper that I had recently prepared and
that was ready for publication. I remember that its title was
"The Morphology of the Chalcidid^." I wrote to Professor
Prentiss and asked him about the botany examination. He
replied that I should prepare an herbarium of one hundred
species of plants to which I should attach the names, and that
I should then come to Ithaca and undergo an oral examination.
I enjoyed the preparation of the herbarium and took it with me
to Ithaca. This was the oral examination:

Prentiss: "Good day, Mr. Howard. I have looked at your
herbarium and find the specimens neatly mounted and correctly
named. You enjoy your work in Washington, I hope? Professor
Comstock has told me nice things about it. How is your mother
now? And where is she?"

Howard: "She is very well, Professor, and happens just now
to be in London."

Prentiss: "Will you please give her my cordial greetings when
you write? That is all. The examination is finished."

And I got my Master's Degree at Commencement in 1886,
Since that time I have always thought of Professor Prentiss in
a most friendly way. He was a fine man and a very kindly one.
He was an admirable botanist and would probably have made a
great name, had he not died at a comparatively early age.

Many of my early recollections of Ithaca were connected with
the church. My parents belonged to the First Presbyterian Church,

[22]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

and I went to Sunday School and usually to two services on
Sunday. The Presbyterian Church in those days was rather puri-
tanical and was based on the Scotch type of Presbyterianism —
foreordination, infant damnation and all that. I am rather glad to
remember that my mind rebelled at many of the tenets and that
when I had grown almost to manhood I welcomed what I heard
of the lectures of Robert G. Ingersoll.

In those days the social life of the small towns and villages,
not only in Central New York and in New England, but else-
where in the United States, centered around the churches. There
was nothing else around which it could center. It was a distinct
survival of Puritanism, and it still holds. Thousands upon thou-
sands of men in public life have come from such an environment,
and, on the whole, it is a good and healthy one. There was, of
course, not enough of outdoor life, and the girls were really con-
fined (out of doors) to croquet, and they laced and wore hoop
skirts and were old-fashionedly feminine. But the boys thought
them perfect and went to church and Sunday School and the
"sociables" and picnics largely on their account. No one was
what we call socially ambitious, and all seemed comparatively
content. As I look back, I can see the beginning of social strata,
but these were based almost entirely on financial standing. It
seemed to me that the families who had pews on the central
aisle of the church, well toward the front, carried themselves with
a faint superiority toward those behind them and on the side
aisles.

On the whole, however, the men and women who have trans-
ferred themselves or who have been transferred elsewhere from
such beginnings have proved progressive and adaptable. Many
of them hold high places and have fitted readily into much more
complicated environments. Many of them have, in fact, gone
on and far surpassed those who have spent their early life in

[23]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

large cities. But there are thousands and thousands of them who
have simply taken the small town life into the cities. And it
must be said that there are many city-bred people who seem to
prefer or at least do confine their social activities to the simple
church life, somewhat like that of the little towns. Perhaps this
is best all around, but I confess to a not unmalicious enjoyment
of a passage in a letter received recently from a New York friend
who found herself temporarily and more or less accidentally in
contact with such an environment, and who is still young:

"Anyone who thinks that good, smug, virtuous young people
are no longer extant should see that bunch up there— some five
hundred of them, under thirty-five, women and men, and all
of them vitally interested in the church and all of them spending
most of their time at the church. Every evening in the week is
alive with some activity and swarming with people. They are
all half-baked and without any background and rather blind,
but nice. New York as I know it, or as you know it, or as any-
one I've ever known knows it, doesn't exist for them. To me
they are a brand new chapter and as such interesting, and they
were very nice to me. I felt like a pilgrim in a far land, and I
wonder if I seemed as unique to them as they to me. They don't
smoke or drink. After their activities in the church they fore-
gather at a restaurant on Broadway, where the upper floor is
reserved for the 'Guild,' and eat ice cream (vanilla) and drink
lemonade and sing the good old songs in loud voices and off the
key. The men are rather handsome and the girls, most of them,
pretty, and they look like other people, but they aren't. There is
a certain blank quality in them on which I can't put my finger.
It is a little the same quality that one feels in most clergymen."

Of course my friend who wrote this is much younger than I
am and didn't have the "advantages" of my early education, and
I wonder whether the people she describes are not happier than
she is.

[24]

chapter II

S

o THE boyhood days at Ithaca and at Cornell were finished,
and I was at last starting out on my own. It is true that I had
helped a little towards the earning o£ what was called my educa-
tion by working occasionally on the University farm at the
munificent wage of ten cents an hour, and that I had also worked
a bit in the University Library on the annual dusting of the
books, and a very litde at the delivery desk, at the same rate
of pay.

One incident of the latter employment stands out in my
memory. A young student (I think he was a Sophomore) came
to the desk one day and asked me whether the Library contained
a periodical known as the Revue du Demi-Monde!

But now I was to be entirely on my own. I stopped in New
York City on my way to Washington. Most of my mother's
family lived there. Two of her brothers, Horace K. and Francis
B. Thurber, were the heads of a great wholesale grocery house,
one of the largest in the world, with branches in London,
Bordeaux, Calcutta and elsewhere, and my brother George was
living with the head of the firm. There were three incidents con-
nected with my New York stop that may be worth telling. Uncle
Horace, austere, absorbed, religious man that he was, laid down
his breakfast newspaper, went with me to the front door and

[25]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

shook hands, saying as a farewell: "Well, my boy, perhaps there
is something in the world that is bigger than business, and per-
haps some day you will be a bigger man than I am." A younger
brother of his, Abner G. Thurber, lived over in Brooklyn. His
farewell to me was quite different. He walked out of the house
to the street and, taking me by the coat lapel in a confidential
way, he said, "Old boy, if you ever get into a scrape, and don't
want your mother to know about it, and need a friend, call on
me." That went to my heart. That uncle surely knew young
men. But the incident that interested me most was that my dear
old grandmother, who was then living with my Uncle Horace,
remarked to her son and daughter-in-law after I had left, "Yes,
Leland is a nice boy, but I do wish that he was not in such a
trifling business."

The journey from New York to Washington was especially
interesting since the train passed from New York across New
Jersey into Pennsylvania, and thence through Delaware and
Maryland, before reaching the District of Columbia. That fact
in itself was quite exciting to an up-State New York boy who
had never been out of his own state except to the Philadelphia
Centennial. And then it was quite interesting when, at Balti-
more, the engine was unfastened from the train and the train
itself was drawn across the city by a chain of mules, led by one
extremely intelligent old white horse, to be met on the other
side of the city by another engine and pulled on to Washington,
forty miles away. Later I was to know Baltimore very well, as
may appear in subsequent pages.

In the class behind me in Cornell, there was a joyous, sandy-
haired, freckled youth, named J. McK. Borden, commonly
known as "Mac" or as "Judge." He had graduated the previous
June, and had gone to Washington to become a draughtsman in

[26]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

the topographic division of the Post Office Department. He was
the only person I knew in Washington, and I had written to
him, asking him to engage a boarding house for me, and he had
answered that I could room with him over Kennedy's grocery
store at 1209 F Street. I reached Washington about dinner-time,
and went at once to Borden's boarding house at the northwest
corner of F and 13th Streets. I found Mac and his mother and
his stepfather at dinner, and after dinner we went to our lodg-
ings. The stepfather. Colonel Carter, and Mrs. Carter, Mac's
mother, had rooms directly below us.

The Carters were most interesting people. The Colonel was a
politician, and I think that his wife, who was very handsome,
was something of a lobbyist. The Colonel, although a Virginian,
was a Republican, and was called a "Carpet-bagger" by the
Democrats, since he had gone to Louisiana after the War, and
had become Speaker of the State Legislature. He held that post
at the time of the Warmoth riots, in the course of which the
Lieutenant-Governor, a negro, was killed. The Colonel was very
hard of hearing, and once told me that that disability had been
of great service to him in presiding over the Legislature, since
he could recognize anyone he pleased and lay his inability to
recognize the first man who arose to his deafness. He was a good
stump speaker, and was used by the Republican Party as a
campaign orator. After the election of President Garfield, he was
rewarded by an appointment as Minister to Venezuela. After
Garfield died, however, in the summer of 1881, he had to resign,
and was succeeded by some other man appointed by President
Arthur.

The Colonel, I am afraid, was something of a poseur, and had
greatly impressed his wife and his stepson with his importance.
I came into the room one evening and found him playing euchre
with Mac, and with one of Nick Carter's (no relation) dime

[27]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

novels open on the table beside him. As I came in, Mrs. Carter
put her finger to her Hps and said, "Be quiet, the Colonel is
composing a great speech."

I should like to tell more about the Carters, for the type was
new to me, and was most interesting. My education as to people
was beginning. But this is the story o£ an entomologist rather
than of a Northern boy who was meeting Southerners for the
first time.

The next morning (it was the thirteenth of November, 1878)
I walked down 13th Street to the old building of the Department
of Agriculture on the Mall, which, it will be remembered, shut
ofif all the north and south streets between the Monument and
the Capitol, except Four-and-a-half, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth,
Twelfth, and Fourteenth. It was an ugly, old, red-brick, mansard-
roofed building of the architectural style not uncommon at that
period, and, although not large, it housed the whole Depart-
ment. The Weather Bureau had not yet been added to the
Department, and was still under the control of the Signal Service
of the War Department, and, in fact, the Department of Agri-
culture comprised only a division of Chemistry, one of Botany,
one of Microscopy, one of Statistics and one of Seed Distribution.
Of these the latter was by far the most important. On the second
floor there was a museum which contained principally models
of fruit (especially apples) which had been made by and were
under the charge of the former entomologist, Townend Glover.
I found the Division of Entomiology in two rather large rooms
and a small hall-room at the west end of the Museum. I have
called it the Division of Entomology, but as a matter of fact it
was not called a "Division" until some years later.

I have told the story of those early days in my "History of
Applied Entomology" (Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections,
vol. 84, 1930) . Professor Riley was then thirty-five years of age. He

[28]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

was about five feet ten inches in height, and was slender and
active. He looked more Hke a poet or an artist, or possibly an
actor, than a man of science. I had seen him six years before at
Ithaca. He greeted me with sufficient cordiality, and introduced
me to his only other assistant, Theodor Pergande, a little German
of forty, with a heavy brown beard, who spoke fluent but rather
ungrammatical English, and who had charge of the rearing of
the insects and the making of the notes. Pergande was conscious
of his poor English, and was anxious to better it in order to
make his notes more readable. Knowing that I was college bred,
he consulted me as to the best way to bring this about. I sug-
gested that he should read the masters of English style. Some
months later I discovered that he had been reading Spenser's
"Faerie Queene" and G. W. P. James' novels. There was a
distinct difference in the wording of his notes. For example, a
record of the biology of, let us say, a species of Smerinthus would
begin: "The sun was setting behind the distant hills when a
solitary horseman" . . . and so on, and so on. But there will be
more of Pergande later.

Much to my disappointment, I found that Professor Riley
wished to use me at the beginning more as a clerk than as a
scientific assistant. The typewriter had not come into use, but
for a few weeks I was able to take his dictation in a bastard
shorthand that I had invented during college lectures, and to
write his letters by longhand.

At the end of three or four weeks, however, he asked me to
prepare for him a manual of silk culture, which I did without
much trouble, after consulting the books on the subject, both
French and Italian, and the Bulletin was published under his
authorship.

Life in Washington in those early days was intensely interest-
ing to me, but I much doubt its interest to other people. Pro-

[29]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

fcssionally I hadn't much chance. In those days it was the custom
of scientific men to take all of the credit for work done by their
assistants. This was considered quite ethical, in fact, the proper
thing to do. The assistants accepted the situation, not because it
was right, but because there was nothing they could do about it.
I seldom looked at a scientific paper published during that period
without wondering who really wrote it. A most interesting and
lengthy treatise could be written under some such title as
"Hidden Bibliography." But it would require enormous research,
and probably would involve some injustices to famous names.
I heard the question argued as late as 1895 at the Cosmos Club,
and remember that Major C. E. Dutton, a very well-known
seismologist, and Colonel Garrick Mallory, an equally well-
known ethnologist, were especially vehement in their claims
that the chief owns the brains of his assistant, who is paid for
their use. It is true that both these men were army officers, and
perhaps this accounted for the vehemence, but the same attitude
was held by many other heads of investigatory work.

From this prevalent fashion, it resulted that my chief signed
everything I wrote, and often without changing a word. It is
true that I did not do much during the six or seven months
that followed, since Professor Riley resigned in a fit of temper,
and my old teacher, Professor Comstock, was appointed as his
successor.

Quite recently, in looking over some letters I wrote to my
mother during these early days, I found one written in 1884,
which expresses, rather sententiously, my ideas at that time on
this subject. I said, "Whenever you see a treatise by Professor or
Dr. So-and-so in which he says in his introduction, 'I cheerfully

acknowledge the help of my assistant, Mr. ,' or words to

that effect, you can make up your mind that the professor wrote
the introduction and the assistant the treatise."

[30]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

Of late I have been thinking over the situation as it appeared
to me then. In other words, I have put myself in the place of the
assistants of those times, and I must confess that they exagger-
ated their own importance. There is much to be said for the
director. But undoubtedly, after I became a chief myself, I went
very far in the other direction. I had suffered so much from what
I considered to be bad treatment that I was very keen to give
everyone his just dues. In fact, John B. Smith, who had become
State Entomologist in New Jersey, wrote me once that I went
to an absurd extreme in that way. But I think I was right, and,
whether my example helped or not, there has been a great
reform. Of course nowadays a chief is not likely to hear com-
plaints of that kind, and in the last thirty or more years but one
complaint has ever reached my ears so far as my own personal
actions are concerned. That was rather an interesting case, and
I am inclined to tell about it.

About 1898, especially after the Spanish- American War, I be-
came gready impressed by the extraordinary extent of food
pollution brought about mainly by the house fly, particularly in
cases where large numbers of people were concentrated for more
or less temporary purposes, and I began an investigation of the
insect fauna of human excreta. It was a very disagreeable subject,
but, as I thought, a very important one. I could not do all the
work myself, but I planned it, and sought the assistance of many
people in different parts of the United States. Most of them
helped me by collecting the insects that were attracted to ex-
posed food, but many of them collected the insects that were
attracted to excreta, either in the open or in privies, and still
others, specialists in the different groups, named the collected
material for me. Of course the help of all of these men was
thankfully acknowledged, and each one was mentioned per-
sonally. There was one young man, F. C. Pratt, an Englishman,

[31]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

then in the employ o£ the Bureau, who was especially apt in
rearing insects, and he did a great deal of the work in the actual
breeding of the specimens. When I came to publish the paper,
which, by the way, was rather lengthy, I called especial attention
to Mr. Pratt's work, and, as I thought, treated him rather hand-
somely. Many years later, however, after his death, I learned that
he had complained to certain other people that I had not treated
him justly and that he should have been the joint author of the
paper, although, as a matter of fact, he had nothing to do with
its planning, wrote not a word of it, and did not appreciate its
importance until he had read it.

Comstock, who had not been married long, was building a
little house on the Cornell campus. He got leave of absence from
the University and came to Washington, where he worked peace-
fully and successfully for two years. His salary as entomologist
was, I think, two thousand dollars a year. His wife was appointed
a clerk, and was given twelve hundred dollars a year. They lived
economically in rooms on F Street, ate at restaurants with very
reasonable prices (in those days a good dinner cost twenty-five
cents), and saved as much money as possible to help meet the
payments on the little house building at Ithaca. We lived on
terms of the greatest intimacy, ate together, and at least once
a week went to the theater. They met the financial demands
from Ithaca so carefully that when we wanted to go to the
theater it was frequently necessary for me to pawn my watch
to buy the tickets. I believe that Professor Comstock had no
watch to pawn.

We worked very ardently, and I wrote many papers, some of
them based on careful, original investigation. Much to my dis-
comfort, Comstock cheerfully assumed the authorship of these
papers, and I entered no protest. I had worked up two of them

[32]

1

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

as a basis for a thesis for a Master's degree at Cornell, but when
Professor Comstock asked me to let him publish them in his
Annual Report, I consented, and thus their titles do not appear
in my personal bibliography. But I enjoyed the work, and we
published in Comstock's Annual Report some excellent articles
about the life histories of several important crop pests.

It was then that I first became interested in parasitic insects,
and I will tell how this came about when I come to write about
the subject of natural control by parasites and predators. The
study of these little creatures and of their extraordinary inter-
actions fascinated me. It is an interest that has continued all my
life. Comstock, at that time, thought that he had tuberculosis, and
I believe that he did have it in an incipient form. He was thin
and pale, coughed frequendy, and I often noticed that his hand-
kerchief was spotted with blood. He thought it necessary to go
to Florida in search of a milder winter climate, and it was there
that he began his study of the scale-insects, which proved to be
of great value, and which soundly established his early reputa-
tion. Much of his material was sent to Washington, and from
it issued many parasites. I studied these, named, described them,
and published my first big paper over my own name under the
title "Report on the Parasites of the Coccidae," etc.

It is interesting to remember that while the Comstocks were
south I made my first field trip. A planter at Portsmouth,
Virginia, who was growing a large acreage of timothy grass,
sent to Washington an appeal for help against the army worm,
which was threatening the complete destruction of his crop. I
boarded a Potomac boat and went down to Portsmouth by night,
and then by carriage out through the swampy region to the
plantation. It was then that I had my first sight of the true
Southern negro. It happened to be Saturday, the big market day
in Portsmouth, and I met hundreds of colored families in their

[33]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

mule carts travelling in from the country to market. When I
reached the farm (or plantation) I found no mansion, but simply
an overseer's house, and the overseer himself was a plain, un-
educated man, who at once took me out to the infested fields.
The scene was extraordinary. Over many acres there was hardly
a stem that did not bear one or more of the voracious caterpillars.
In those days there was little that could be done except to stop
the march of the army by ditching or something of the sort.
But the first caterpillar that I examined had some white eggs
on its back, and these I at once identified as the eggs of a
tachina fly. This was encouraging, and I examined other cater-
pillars. In fact, I spent four hours in the field trying to find a
caterpillar that did not bear the parasite eggs, but without success.
Thus I was able to assure the overseer that although there was
no help for the bad damage that had been done, it would not
continue, and that probably no more army worms would be
seen in that vicinity for some years to come.

All this had been done in the morning, and we returned to
the overseer's litde house, where the trap was waiting to take
me back to Portsmouth. The overseer suggested that perhaps I
would like something to eat. Not wishing to put his household
to any trouble, I suggested that I might like a sandwich.

"A sangwich?" he said. "Do you know that I saw one of them
things once. I had a big trip to New York, and went down to
Coney Island, and there I saw one of them things. I cayn't git
you a sangwich, but I kin rusde up some corn pone."

And then I made my first acquaintance with the Southern
corn pone and hog. It seemed to me very disagreeable, soggy and
unappetizing, but I was hungry and I ate it. I have since learned
to like corn pone as it should be cooked, but this was the first
experience with it, and it did not taste good to the boy from
Central New York.

[34]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

A detailed account of those early days would not be of especial
interest, but people under the present Civil Service cannot realize
the conditions that existed then. Appointments in Washington
below the rank of Cabinet officers, and possibly their immediate
entourage, were made solely by what was called "congressional
influence." Persons wanting government jobs appealed to their
members of Congress, and a considerable part of the time of
members was taken up in going from department to department
to look for jobs for clamoring constituents. And the appointees
themselves were constantly trying to strengthen their hold upon
these members to fix their continued backing. With a change of
administration, everyone was fearful, and there was a decided
overturn in the office-holders.

I remember vividly that Cleveland's first election marked a
radical change. The Democrats had not been in power for many
years. One day while I was sitting at my desk, a shadow fell on
the papers in front of me, and I looked up to find a tall, gaunt
Southerner in a white linen duster, with the corners of his
mouth stained with tobacco juice. He grinned at me and said,
"Don't disturb yourself, sonny. I'm just lookin' around tryin' to
find a desk that will suit me, and I rather think that yours is
about right." And then, too, I remember that it was considered
the just thing for every employee to contribute to the election
funds of the party in power to the extent of one month's salary.
For example, I was asked to give one hundred dollars to the
Republican Congressional Fund during the first year I held office.
The man who solicited these funds was the private secretary to
the then Head of the Department. Thus it was equivalent to an
order. I paid it the first time, but never paid it later. It is only
fair to state, however, that during my whole residence in Wash-
ington of more than fifty-three years I never knew of a single
case in which a scientific man lost his position for any reason

[35]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

other than incompetency. As a matter o£ fact, their politics were
never asked. I doubt whether in later years any of the Cabinet
officers knew the politics of their subordinates any more than
they knew their religion, except possibly of the few men im-
mediately surrounding them. But what a great relief it was, not
only to the government employees, but even to the members of
Congress themselves, when the Civil Service reformers, headed,
I remember, by George William Curtis, finally secured the
passage of the Civil Service Law, and the Civil Service Com-
mission was eventually established!

But the Civil Service Law is by no means perfect. I was the
head of a Bureau for many years, and the Bureau grew rapidly
in size. My personal acquaintance with entomologists and with
teachers of entomology was very great, and I always felt that
I could pick my assistants much better than any Commission
with its series of examinations. And then, too, I always objected
to the clause in the law that provides for State representation in
the Civil Service, since it was always obvious to me that the
Government wanted the best men and women utterly irrespec-
tive of the states in which they voted. In the early days, meeting
from time to time socially with General Black and John R.
Proctor, each of whom for a time was President of the Com-
mission, I always tried to discuss this question. General Black,
I remember, defended the clause, but Proctor agreed that I was
right.

I should like to say more about the poor clerks and the lazy
clerks of those days. But I must confine myself more to scientific
matters, and more especially to entomology.

It was difficult to learn the exact names of many of the insects
we were studying in Comstock's time. I had taken up the para-
sitic Hymenoptera, and Comstock had taken up the scale-insects.

[36]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

When we were studying beetles we got the names from Henry
Ulke, who was an amateur in science, but who was locally
famous as a portrait painter, and at the same time was a pianist.
When we wanted to know the names of the little flies we sent
them to Edward Burgess of Boston, who was also more or less
of an amateur, but whose real interest during his later years was
centered in the designing of yachts. It will be remembered that
he was the designer of the famous Mayflower I, which won its
race against the British competitor some time during the '8o's.
We were constantly rearing little moths, and the American who
then knew the most about these forms was Professor C. H.
Fernald, of Amherst, Massachusetts. During one of his summer
vacations (I think it was in 1880) Fernald and his wife came
to Washington and spent part of July and August in the Depart-
ment of Agriculture, working in the same room with me. Corn-
stock and his wife being absent in California, where Comstock
had gone to round out his knowledge of the scale-insects of
the United States. The Fernalds were delightful people. Professor
Fernald having a somewhat boyish humor that filled me with
joy. At that time beggars and selling agents of all kinds had
the run of the government offices, and I shall never forget the
dear old Professor's method of getting rid of them. When an
unmistakable beggar entered the room, Fernald would imme-
diately jump to his feet, rush over to him, grasp him by the
hand, and say, "How do you do? I am so glad to see you. How
did you leave the folks at home?" Almost invariably this so
embarrassed the beggar that he turned and left.

And this reminds me of a story that was told at that time of
a certain high official of die Treasury Department, named
Trenholm— a very dignified and cultured South Carolina gentle-
man. He had issued strict orders that no beggars were to be
allowed to enter his office. One day a deaf mute slipped by the

[37]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

door-keeper, went up to Mr. Trenholm's desk and laid before
him a card on which was printed the deaf-mute alphabet. The
high official looked up, greatly irritated. He realized that he
could not say anything that would be understood, so he called
to the door watchman, "John, convey to this mendicant the idea
that he cannot vend his wares here." Taking in the situation,
John resorted to the sign-language. He patted the man on the
shoulder, pointed to the door, and kicked violently with his foot.
The beggar understood and left.

And so time went on for the better part of two years, and
then came a Presidential election. The Republicans won, and
on the fourth of March James R. Garfield was sworn in as
President. He appointed a new Cabinet, and a new Commis-
sioner of Agriculture. The Department of Agriculture was not
then represented in the Cabinet. It was a so-called independent
department. The new commissioner's name was George B.
Loring of Massachusetts, and he was immediately overwhelmed
by a mass of demands from all over the country that C. V.
Riley be reappointed U. S. Entomologist. Although Comstock
was a good man and had done very good work, the political
pressure was too strong and Riley was reappointed, Comstock
going back to Ithaca with a sop of one thousand dollars, given
to him for the completion of his work on scale-insects.

I have told the story of this period rather fully in my "History
of Applied Entomology." It is only necessary to say here that
although I fully expected to be discharged and to go to New
York for my medical studies, I was retained and was soon
designated as first assistant.

But before Riley had fully made up his mind about me I
was sent on three field trips. The first was to Illinois, Indiana
and Wisconsin, to investigate serious outbreaks of the army
worm. I started from the old Pennsylvania Railroad Station at

[38]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

Sixth Street, and as it happened was only a short distance behind
President Garfield and Secretary Blaine when the President was
shot in the back by the crazy office-seeker, Jules Guiteau. The
station was crowded at the time, and many people did not realize
the situation. My train was due to start, and I felt that I would
only make one more in the mass of curious people that would
get in the way, and so I boarded the train and left for Chicago.
On my return from that trip I was sent south, this time to
investigate damage done by insects to the rice crop on certain
of the sea islands off the coast of Georgia. This was a fascinating
trip. I was the house guest of Colonel Scriven in Savannah, and
the trip was full of delightful and interesting experiences. It
was also successful from the scientific point of view, and I
accumulated a lot of notes, afterwards published in one of
Riley's reports, which constituted our first authentic information
concerning the insect enemies of this important crop.

One evening, sitting on the veranda of the Scriven mansion
in Savannah with the Colonel and his wife, eating delicious
rice-birds on toast (a heavenly dish), Mrs. Scriven, a beautiful
and charming lady, laughed girlishly when I asked about the
Colonel's military tide. She told me that he had been in com-
mand of the defenses of Savannah. They had expected an attack
by the water-front, so the Colonel had spent many weeks filling
up the channel of the Savannah River with all sorts of obstruc-
tions. Finally, however, the army of General Sherman captured
the city by an overland attack. Then she said with malicious
glee, "The only thing that the Colonel's obstructions in the
river ever did was to wreck one of his own rice-boats coming
back from the plantations some years after the war!"

I was about to state that this was my first trip south since
my journey down the Potomac to Portsmouth. But there was

[39]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

another trip during the Comstock regime that should be men-
tioned.

One day Professor Comstock came to me and said that he
had just met an interesting travelHng EngHshman, who was
apparently a man of wealth and who was going south by way
of New Orleans to Mexico. He was writing a book on his travels
and needed a secretary for an hour or two every evening.
Comstock recommended me for the job, and I went that night
to Welcker's Hotel, where I found the English traveller. He
was a man in the late fifties, rather short, with a bushy beard,
and I saw at once that he was a character entirely new to my
experience. He began to dictate to me his experiences in Canada.
It was in the early spring, and he had just come from Montreal,
where he had seen the ice carnival, about which he was very
enthusiastic. After dictation he invited me to dine with him.
He was a good diner — knew good things, and liked them.

For some days we followed the same program. He spent his
days going about the city, visiting Congress and the museums
and other public institutions. He was a chatty man, and occa-
sionally picked up some American and invited him to dine with
us (I dined with him every day). I remember that one day
he had invited a curious old German professor, an ethnologist,
who was connected with the Smithsonian Institution. When
the man appeared at the hotel his polite opening remark was

"So, Mr. , you are an Englishman. Do you know I consider

your Queen a very ordinary old woman?" The Englishman's
tact was quite sufficient, and the incident passed o£F pleasandy
enough, but I have often wondered what would have happened
had the host been a less tactful man.

At the end of a week or so Mr. asked me whether I

would go to New Orleans with him. It so happened that com-
plaints had been received at the Department of much damage

[40]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

that had been done by a borer in the stalks o£ the sugar cane,
but there were no funds that could be used for investigation,
so the Englishman's proposal to pay my expenses was gladly
accepted, and we started south together.

Some years afterwards the Englishman published a book about
his travels around the world, and I looked up a copy in one of
the libraries, reading with great interest the part that related to
the time when I was with him. It was truthful in the main, but
the facts were varied from time to time, probably in order to
make it more interesting. For example, the passenger train
ahead of us going through the Carolinas was purposely de-
railed, plunder being the probable object. When we arrived at
the spot in the middle of the night we were held for a long
time, and finally were put out of our train, and had to walk
until we had passed the derailed train, mounting an emergency
car on the far side to be carried to the nearest town. The car,
in which we were placed on the emergency train was a freight car,
lighted by a lantern, and pardy filled with the more important
luggage from the wrecked train. The conductor and the engineer
of that train were binding pistol wounds they had received after
the derailing. Altogether it was rather exciting. The book account
simply made all this happen to our own train— not to the one
ahead of us.

Another time, when we were going through the flat land
between Mobile and New Orleans, we saw that the marshes
were on fire some miles away. As described in the book, this
incident was illustrated by a full page in vivid color, showing
great flames and dense smoke, with the legend, "The Pampas
on Fire Near the Gulf of Mexico," and the text stated that the
Americans in the train, with their accustomed gambling propen-
sity, were laying wagers on whether we should get through alive.

But enough about the book. It can doubtless be found without

[41]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

difficulty, although I am not telling its name nor that o£ its
author. We finally reached New Orleans, and I was fascinated
by the still very Frenchified city (this was in the spring of
1879). The French Quarter was still perfectly French, and,
in fact, on one side of Canal Street, it was as though you were
in France.

It so happened that my chum, Mac Borden, had spent his
early boyhood in New Orleans. One thing he said to me before
I left Washington illustrated the inconsequence of some of
childhood's most vivid recollections. He said, "When you get

to New Orleans, go to Number Esplanade Street. Go

through the iron gate, down the brick walk to the front door
of the house. Ask for permission to go through into the back
yard, and then go down the brick walk to the stable. When
you get to the stable door count four rows of brick from the
left edge of the door towards yourself, and then three rows
to the left, and see if the brick is still there that has a little hole
in it where I fell down and broke off my tooth."

We went to the old St. Charles Hotel, a distinctly American
institution, and paid six dollars a day each, American plan,
which, of course, included our meals. But the food did not suit
my English companion, and we dined every day at a famous
French restaurant on Canal Street. My economical mind was
shocked at the amount of the bill, which was seldom less than
fifteen dollars. We went to the French opera, and it must have
been then in its prime, for the performance was very good. The
audience was brilliant, and the conversation around us was
wholly in French.

My English companion had been spending money like water,
apparently without the slightest regret. One day, however, we
boarded the ferry-boat to cross the Mississippi to Algiers. We
decided not to leave the boat, and returned to New Orleans

[42]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

without paying another fare. It deHghted my companion to
find that we had crossed back and forth on the single fare, and
so we stayed on the boat for several hours, going across the river
and back again. I don't think that he saved enough money to
pay for the dinner that night, but we had a long and interesting
conversation. Among other things we talked about the Bible.
He was a Bible student and said that he understood all the
texts perfectly. I remarked to him, "How would you explain
the one that goes 'Ye are the salt of the earth. Now if the salt
hath lost its savor, wherewithal shall it be salted?'"

"Why," he said, "that's very simple. Suppose that you and a
lot of other chaps were the aristocracy of a certain country. If
you were not perfectly moral and upright, and all that sort of
thing, what the deuce would become of the country?"

It was a wonderful experience for me, and with all of his
apparent eccentricities I admired the Englishman greatly. When
he had to go on to Mexico he asked me to go with him, but
I had my work to do in Louisiana, and this, together with the
fact that there was to be a change of administration in Wash-
ington, made me think it wise to decline. I gave him a letter
of introduction to a classmate of mine who had taken a minor
engineering job in the City of Mexico, and he acted as the
Englishman's secretary for a few weeks after his arrival.

Then I went into the Bayou Teche country to a large sugar
plantation, the owner of which had appealed to Washington
for help against a beede (Ligyrus) that was boring into the
bases of the cane stalks. I found that I had known the son of
the planter at Cornell. He was W. J. Thompson of the class of
1875. His father, an austere, bearded man, had come from
Chicago, and had bought this big plantation on the Teche. He
told me that in those days (possibly it is so now) sugar planting
was something of a gamble. Two years out of three the crop

[43]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

might fail, but the profits on the third year would exceed a
hundred thousand dollars, and this enabled him to carry on.
Here is a curious instance of the importance to some people of
little technical points. The elder Thompson said to me the first
night I was there, "So you are an assistant to Professor Corn-
stock? I don't believe that he is a very good entomologist."

I said, "Why? What makes you think that?"

"Well," he said, "I sent samples of this beetle to him, and
also to the great entomologist, Professor Riley. Comstock wrote
me that it was Ligyms rugiceps and Riley wrote me that it was
Ligyrus ruginasus." (Henry Ulke had identified the beede for
Comstock, and E. A. Schwarz had determined it for Riley.) I
wonder if Mr. Thompson thought that the proper Latin name
had any effect upon the remedial treatment.

The next few days we spent in the cane fields. It was a new
crop to me, and I learned a lot.

One interesting incident connected with my stay at Calumet
Plantation was a visit to Joe Jefferson, the actor, who had a
house in the swampy woods some thirty miles away. It does
not seem to be generally known among the thousands of
admirers of Jefferson that he had this place in Louisiana, and
that he spent his time there painting swamp landscapes. As I
recollect, the canvases were not especially good, but Jefferson
was cordial to us, and was quite as charming off the stage as on.

On my return to Washington, I wrote a circular about this
damage to sugar-cane by Ligyrus, and it was published by the
Department, of course over Comstock's signature.

There was one more trip to the south in those early days,
and it happened after my return from the Georgia rice-fields.
The same old northern army worm turned up in great numbers
in the wheat-fields of northern Alabama, around Huntsville,

[44]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

and Professor Riley sent me down to investigate. At Huntsville
I met the editor of the local newspaper, who introduced me to
a number of charming gentlemen with various titles, such as
Judge, General, Senator, and so on. They treated me with the
most perfect courtesy, and gave me the highest opinion of the
Southern gentleman. The insect outbreak was, of course, a
temporary one, and has probably never been repeated down
there since. But it gave me a very emphatic opinion of the
value of natural enemies. At one point the marching army of
caterpillars had met a rather deep railway excavation, and had
fallen in by the millions, so as to cover the rails and fill the
excavation to a depth of several feet. Such a sanguinary scene
I have never met with since. Carnivorous ground beedes, preda-
tory bugs, Tachina flies. Ichneumon flies, and other predators
and parasites had flown in, evidently from many miles around,
and were either feasting upon the caterpillars, or laying their
eggs in or or their wriggling bodies.

Similar things have been noticed by other observers, but no
one has yet explained how these carnivorous insects discover
from long distances the presence of the food in such profusion.

While I am thinking of the South, I remember that there was
another trip during this same general period. There was an
international celebration called The Cotton Exposition, that was
held in New Orleans in 1884-85, and I was sent down by
Professor Riley to install a rather elaborate exhibit illustrating
applied entomology. John Boutelle of the Coast and Geodetic
Survey, who knew New Orleans well, gave me a letter of
introduction to Victor Bero, who kept a delightful little French
restaurant on the Rue Bourbon. While Americans who liked
French food went there, the clientele was largely French, and
French was the predominant spoken language. There were not

[45]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

many tables, and the floor was uncarpeted and sanded. Bero
himself was a well-known character in New Orleans, and a man
of considerable weight in the community. He gave me a room
in a building adjoining the restaurant, and I took all of my
meals with him, to the great improvement of my poor college
French. I spent a very enjoyable and improving month, and a
large share of my pleasure was due to Victor Bero.

Fifteen or sixteen years later I entered New Orleans from the
west. I had with me three travelling companions whom I had
met on the through train from California. We reached the city
about nine o'clock at night, registered at the St. Charles Hotel,
and then went around to Victor's restaurant to dine. The table
d'hote dinner was over, and so, with the consent of my com-
panions, I asked Victor to get us up something nice. And he
did. There was an inimitable French soup, a broiled red snapper,
a canvasback duck, a wonderful salad and an ice. And there
were some excellent white and red wines as well, followed by
coffee and cognac. I asked for the bill (mind you there were
four of us), and when Victor himself brought it (it was twelve
dollars) two of my companions (not very well-bred men)
protested rather vociferously about the amount. Victor shrugged
his shoulders and said calmly, "You will pay me nothing," and
walked back to his desk. I rushed after him, explained the men
were not friends of mine but simply compagnons de voyage,
and insisted on paying the bill.

Victor made money. He bought a farm, on which he raised
his own poultry and vegetables for his restaurant, and he bought
a hotel, which he managed on the side. But his health failed,
and he died. Some years afterward, I went to New Orleans
again, and of course to the old place on Bourbon Street. It
was greatly changed. More tables had been put in, and the
sanded floors no longer existed. The room was filled with

[46]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

diners, nearly all Americans, and the French atmosphere was
largely non-existent. However, I took a seat, and remarked
cheerfully to the waiter, "II y a beaucoup de monde ici ce soir."

He scratched his head and said in Hibernian English, "This
is a French place all right, but I don't understand the lingo."

Possibly this anecdote illustrates well the change that had
come to New Orleans.

Now followed a long period of about thirteen years under
Professor Riley. He seemed gradually to rely upon me more
and more, and although we had a number of other assistants,
he soon made me the principal one. His health was not good,
and he travelled a great deal, leaving me in charge of the office
at Washington during his many and frequently long absences.
Gradually he allowed me to publish shorter articles under my
own signature, and in 1889 he was able to begin the publication
of a periodical journal known as Insect Life, intended at first
to be issued monthly, but which became more or less irregular.
However six volumes were published under our joint editorship.
During the years of Professor Riley's incumbency of the office
of Chief of the Service (1881 to 1894) the work was interesting
enough. Admirable annual reports and many bulletins were pub-
lished, and, in fact, it was a period of marked progress. The
establishment of the journal just referred to, the founding of the
Association of Economic Entomologists, the establishment of
State Experiment Stations, under the so-called Hatch Act, and
the consequent impetus to the teaching of entomology in the
state colleges and universities, all contributed largely to this
result.

The most dramatic episode of this period was the extraordinary
success of the introduction from Australia of a little beetle of the
so-called lady-bird family that utterly destroyed the fluted scale

[47]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

that was threatening to exterminate the citrus orchards of Cali-
fornia. Later we will consider the whole question of the practical
use of insect parasites and predators, and this particular introduc-
tion will be mentioned. But we may well say something more
about it here.

The scale-insect in question was very difficult to kill by means
of washes, since the female carried her eggs in a dense mass
covered by fluted wax, that was impermeable to nearly all liquids,
and treatment by hydrocyanic acid gas had not been invented.
Two of our agents, Albert Koebele and D. W. Coquillet, had
been spending their time in different experiments, searching
for some means of control. Riley, by correspondence, had learned
that the original home of the scale was probably Australia, and
that, although it occurred there, it did little damage. He urged
one of his correspondents, Mr. Frazer S. Crawford of Adelaide,
South Australia, to try to find out whether the scale had insect
enemies. Crawford succeeded in rearing a little parasitic fly, and
sent specimens to Washington. Then Riley wanted to go to
Australia to send this parasite over in large numbers. But the
regulations would not permit him to do so. Eventually he
secured permission from the Department of State to send two
men over under funds that had been appropriated for United
States representation at an exposition about to be held in Mel-
bourne. Koebele, a remarkable collector, was sent over to attend
to the parasites, and another assistant, F. M. Webster, went along
to prepare a report on agricultural features of the exposition.
This last was a quid pro quo to compensate the exposition fund
for its payment of Koebele's expenses.

In the meantime Coquillet at Los Angeles had prepared an
orange tree, well stocked with scales and covered by a close gauze
tent, to receive the parasites.

Koebele found the parasitic fly in small numbers, but he also

[48]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

found the little predatory beetle that was to become so famous.
Both were sent to Coquillet.

The results startled the whole biological and horticultural
world. In less than a year all threat of damage by this particular
scale-insect was a thing of the past. And it was the little beetle
that had done the work.

The beneficial insect was known then as Vedalia cardinalis, but
the genus was later changed to Nomtis (by skilled experts).
It became generally known as the "Australian Ladybird," and
the incident has become an entomological and horticultural
classic.

The credit for this fine accomplishment has been disputed by
Californians, notably by a prominent citizen of that state named
Frank McCoppin, who was the United States Commissioner to
the Melbourne Exposition. Moreover, there is a recent tendency
in Germany to call all of this assisted natural control work the
"Koebele Method." The Germans are rather partial to their own
people — quite properly so — and Koebele was born in Germany.
The truth is, that the main credit belongs to Riley. I remember
with some confusion that when he talked over the plan with E.
A. Schwarz and myself we told him that in our opinion there
was little chance of success, since Australia was in an entirely
different life zone, as well as in the other hemisphere.

In spite of the fact that I was slowly given more and more
credit for what I did, I was by no means satisfied; nor was I
by any means entirely wrapped up in my work. I made many
friends among other young men, in and out of the government
service, rode the tall bicycle, belonged to an admirable bicycle
club, went constantly to the theater and the opera, and joined
a musical society. Many of my friends were German, and I went

[49]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

often to their beer-gardens and to their Sangerbund concerts,
and in general led a not unusual life.

It may be of interest here to say a few words about music.
My mother was a charming singer, and my father had a good
tenor voice. Both their families were musical. In college I sang
in the University Glee Club, and played the bass viol in the
Curtis Society Orchestra. As a substitute I also sang with my
mother in one of the church choirs. She was the leading soprano
in the quartet, and whenever the bass or tenor or alto was ill,
I took his or her part. Soon after I came to Washington, I
joined the old Philharmonic Society — a choral society which
occasionally gave concerts throughout the winter. It was led by
Dr. John P. Caulfield, an Irishman, who was a doctor of music
from the University of Dublin. I remember that we sang several
oratorios, and on one occasion, with great success, Rossini's
"Stabat Mater."

In fact, it was through music that I met my wife. She was
a girl of twenty-one and had a glorious soprano voice. The old
Philharmonic Society died and was succeeded by the Washing-
ton Choral Society under the leadership of Harry Sherman, a
man famous in musical circles in Washington at that time.
I had met Miss Clifton, and at the opening meeting of the
Choral Society I discovered her among the sopranos, so during
the first winter I took her to rehearsals. She was then singing
in the Choir of St. Matthews, the principal Catholic Church in
Washington. We were married a year later, and in the six years
before children began to make their appearance we went con-
stantly to musical things. Every winter we went to New York
to hear the Nibelungen Ring at the Metropolitan.

I am bringing in this reference to music to make an interest-
ing psychological point. In spite of my devotion to the best
music, there came a time when my liking for it left me sud-

[30]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

denly. It happened in the Dresden Opera House, and I think it
was in 1905 (I was then forty-eight years old). The opera was
"Tannhauser," and I Hstened to the overture with all of the old
thrills and a deep appreciation of the deep silence on the part
of the audience. But after the beginning of the first act I found
that I could not stand it, and went out into the open air. From
that time for ten years I could not listen to music. This was
not physiological as far as I could tell. My health was perfect,
and I was conscious of no change until ten years later when I
happened to hear an orchestra playing something by Brahms.
And then the old love came back. Let the psychologists explain
this.

In spite of the fact that Professor Riley was constandy throw-
ing more and more responsibility upon my shoulders, I had a
distinct feeling that I did not satisfy him. In fact, I learned later
that he told Professor S. W. WiUiston, then of Yale and after-
wards of Kansas and Chicago, that I was by no means an ideal
assistant, and, in fact, Williston said that Riley offered him my
job. Williston declined with thanks, and I am not sure whether I
was lucky or not. At that time, Williston was possibly more
interested in the Diptera than he was in his paleontological
studies, in which he afterwards became famous and which
brought him his election to the National Academy.

At all events, I stayed on, although other positions were occa-
sionally offered to me. I remember that J. A. Holmes, much later
Director of the U. S. Bureau of Mines, wanted me to go to the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I remember also
that Morris K. Jesup, then President of the American Museum
of Natural History in New York, spoke to me about taking
a post there, and would have given it to me had the Museum
been able to meet my modest financial demands. But they were

[51]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

restricted in funds at that time, and the post was given to
Wilham Beutenmiiller for a few years until the financial weather
brightened, when W. M. Wheeler (then of Clark University
and later of Harvard) was appointed.

I think that I must have had an idea that if I held to my
Washington position I would eventually become Chief. I was
not especially ambitious, and had no idea whether I was good
at executive work, but I liked Washington and had adopted a
kind of laissez-faire policy of life. In fact, it was comparative
poverty that finally made me begin to work in earnest. I remem-
ber that once David Starr Jordan, in speaking of his college days,
used the expression "and we were so helped by that blessed
poverty." That was the first time that I ever heard poverty called
blessed. But it was a very significant saying, since at least com-
parative poverty has been the great incentive that has led many
men to success of one kind or another. At all events, I began
to be more active in my work, and to look about for chances
to spread out. These chances, however, were few and far be-
tween so long as my Chief was in the saddle.

However, in the spring of 1894, after rather serious misunder-
standings with the then Secretary of Agriculture, Sterling J.
Morton, Riley, on his return from a West Indian trip, resigned,
and his resignation was promptly accepted. Here apparently was
my chance. But the authorities, knowing that I had been what
is termed a "loyal assistant," feared that I might be a difficult
person, and so they sent out letters to James Fletcher of Canada,
to S. H. Scudder, of Boston, and to A, J. Cook, of Michigan,
asking for suggestions as to the most competent man to succeed
to the office. Rather to their surprise, I think, all of these men
recommended me, and in June, 1894, ^ received the appointment
as Chief of the Service.

[52]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

As it happened, in tlie decade following 1889, four remarkable
things occurred. The first was the discovery of the Gipsy Moth
in New England in 1889; the second was the finding of the
Mexican Cotton Boll Weevil in Texas in 1893; the third was
the appearance of the San Jose Scale in eastern orchards about
the same time; and the fourth was the discovery by Ronald Ross
of the carriage of malaria by certain mosquitoes. The first three
were of tremendous importance to the United States, and in-
volved the loss of many millions of dollars. The fourth was of
the greatest importance to all mankind, for malaria, while not
so great in mortality as cholera and the plague and certain other
diseases, was responsible for a tremendous lowering of vitality
and for the bringing about of conditions leading up to mortality
from other causes.

Thus the horizon opened up very greatly. I felt that I was
no longer engaged in work that might be called of comparatively
litde importance. One of the four discoveries mentioned above
leads naturally to a digression and takes us back to an earlier
period.

In the early i88o's, being by no means convinced of the cer-
tainty of a remunerative career in entomology, I decided to
follow my early medical inclination, and at least to gain the
degree of Doctor of Medicine. As it happened, the old Colum-
bian University, an institution founded and largely sustained by
the Baptist Church (it is now the George Washington Uni-
versity, a non-sectarian institution), had a medical department
founded seventy or eighty years earlier. The professors were
practically all men who were in medical practice in Washington,
and, for the convenience of government employees, the lectures
began at four-thirty in the afternoons and continued until nine-
thirty, after which all dissecting and certain other things had to
be done. Office hours for government employees were then from

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

nine a. m. to four p. m., so that a medical student after a hard
day's work had to eat a hurried dinner and go to a four-thirty
lecture. By the time he left the dissecting room it was usually
nearly midnight, and he was a very tired man.

There were some mighty good men in the Faculty in those
days. The lecturer on anatomy was no less a person than Elliot
Coues, a retired army surgeon, and a brilliant man who had
made his reputation largely on his work in comparative anatomy.
A. F. A. King was the lecturer on gynecology and obstetrics.
He was a first-rate man of a speculative turn of mind, whose
fame today rests largely on the fact that as early as 1881 he
published a long essay seeking to prove that malaria was a
mosquito-born disease. This essay was theoretical, not based on
actual experimentation, but it brought together a host of facts
and marshalled them in logical order. I remember very well that
when he read his first paper on this subject before the Philo-
sophical Society of Washington, he came down to Professor
Riley's office and discussed the matter with Riley and myself.
To my eternal shame, I confess that we both pooh-poohed the
idea, and as a matter of fact, no one took any stock in it until
Ross's triumphant demonstration in Calcutta seventeen years
later.

Then there was Daniel Webster Prentiss, lecturer on Materia
Medica; George W. Acker, teacher of the microscope; J. Ford
Thompson, lecturer on surgery, and a brilliant surgeon. I think,
that I will be pardoned if I tell a little yarn at this point.

A group of us, all students, were told to go to a certain hospital
to watch certain operations. The first operation, which was very
gory, was the excision of one of the super-maxillary bones, and it
was done by a surgeon known among the boys as the "butcher."
Half sickened at the sight, we gathered around another table,
fearful of what we were going to see. This time the operation was

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

on an Irishman, and was of slight importance. It was simply the
removal of a gangrened toe. The patient was partially under the
influence of ether, Ford Thompson was operating, and almost
with a single flick of his wrist the work was done. So great was
the feeling of relief after the other operation that we involun-
tarily laughed with pleasure. The Irishman, only partially un-
conscious, had been crooning to himself, and, hearing the laugh,
said rather mumblingly, "Docther, docther, cut aff anither one.
It amuses the bhoys."

But the work was hard. I contracted malaria, and I married,
and the combination of the two things was too much for the
medical studies, so they stopped long before I got my degree.
But I never regretted them, and my interest in medicine, begun
during my post-graduate studies at Cornell, has continued ever
since.

In fact, not only have medical studies always interested me,
but medical men as well. During the years from 1886 to 1898,
however, I read little medicine (although I used to look over
the Lancet and the Journal of the American Medical Associa-
tion at the Club), and it was not until the epoch-making dis-
coveries of the relation of insects to human disease were an-
nounced that I got back into the medical field. Then I pitched
in rather strenuously. But I shall tell of this somewhat at length
in another place. Medical investigators soon began to realize
that not only was it necessary to know mosquitoes well, but
that when a disease is shown to have an insect vector, the eco-
nomic entomologist, by his training, is the man above all others
to point out the best way of controlling this vector.

And so, after some years in which I had published articles and
books, the bright idea occurred to some of the members of the
faculty of the Medical College of George Washington University
that I ought to have a medical degree. They pushed the matter

[55]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

and succeeded, and in 191 1 I was given an M.D. Honoris Causa,
partly for the work I had done in the college many years before,
but mainly because of my later services to public health and
my investigations of the insects that carry disease. An honorary
degree in medicine is an unusual thing, and I was very proud
of this recognition. I later joined the Medical Society of the
District of Columbia, and am now on its honorary membership
list.

As the force of the Bureau of Entomology grew, its library
was enlarged, and it was necessary to employ several trained
librarians. I was able from an early date to use these people as
readers and so to go through a great deal of medical literature
with little loss of time.

Here I should like to revert a moment to the subject of
honorary degrees in medicine. Back in the middle of the last
century — of course before and later — men were licensed to prac-
tise medicine in New York State without necessarily having
attended a medical college. They studied in some doctor's office,
later passed an examination by State authorities and were then
admitted to practise. That, I believe, was the way that my grand-
father. Dr. Calvin Howard, of Delhi, New York, followed.
At all events, I was delighted to find some years ago that his
name was among the few that had been given an honorary
medical degree in 1842 by Columbian College of Washington.
From this old college grew the Medical College of George Wash-
ington University. Thus my grandfather was given the same
degree by the same college over sixty years before me.

[56]

chapter III

M,

.Y LIFE in Washington as Riley's first assistant from 1881
to 1894 was not so very different from that of many hundreds
of other government employees. The scientific aspects of the life
have been touched upon in a previous chapter. As to the other
aspects, down to the time of my marriage in 1886, something
really ought to be said. At first there were no scientific societies
except the old Philosophical Society, but that soon began to split,
and the Biological, the Anthropological, the Chemical, the En-
tomological, and other societies in increasing number, were
formed. The Philosophical Society was not especially interesting
to a very young man, and conditions in the office, as described
in the previous chapter, were decidedly not such as would compel
my serious absorption.

The old high bicycle had made its appearance upon the streets,
and it fascinated a lot of us. The Capitol Bicycle Club was
founded. Many college-bred men had come to Washington,
attracted by the short working hours (nine o'clock until four)
and the comparatively good salaries. By making use of the ad-
mirable night schools, they expected to get their professional edu-
cations in law or medicine without expense to their families.
Many of the fine young men who did this afterwards became

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

prominent in the professions. Others who began in this way
have eventually come back to Washington as Senators or as
members of the House of Representatives.

When the tall bicycle first came into use it was rather ex-
pensive. I think that an old so-called Columbia wheel cost one
hundred and fifty dollars — perhaps more. Living was very cheap,
and these boys who were drawing one hundred to one hundred
and fifty dollars a month were able to buy wheels. On the whole,
it was a well-educated and rather financially independent set
of young men who started the club, and it stayed in existence
for many years. Friendships were formed that lasted through
life. There were long runs and race meetings, and there was a
club house and congenial club life and college songs and dances.
In fact, it opened up a side of life quite new to a young fellow
who had come from an outside environment. It must be con-
fessed that during the years prior to 1886 this club, with its
many activities, its visits from the clubs of other cities and its
visits to other cities, filled more of my mind than it should have
done. But on the other hand it was broadening to a certain
point, and it kept us all out of doors much of the time, so on
the whole it made us healthier and better men.

It is difficult for people nowadays to realize the activities of
the old tall bicycle clubs. The men of my age who could afford
it nearly all belonged to one or another of these organizations.
There was a national group, and it published its own journal,
The American Wheelman, which, by the way, was founded
and edited by S. S. McClure, who became so prominent in later
years as the head of a publishing house, the founder of a maga-
zine, and later as a writer. In fact, many men of later prominence
belonged to those old clubs. I remember, for example, a visit we
once had from the Germantown (Pennsylvania) club. One of

[58]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

its members interested us greatly by making some impromptu
and very clever pencil sketches. His name was Joseph J. Pennell.
This man reached exceptional fame, but it is also true that there
were many others who reached high rank in many lines of
thought and action.

As it happened, I presided rather recently at a big dinner cele-
brating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Capitol
Club. It was attended by seventy or eighty gray-haired veterans,
and I had much sly pleasure in complimenting patronizingly
the after-dinner speech of a retired Major General of the U. S.
Army, who, as a long-legged boy, had ridden a sixty-inch wheel
on many of our runs.

I could tell many stories about these young men, but I can
spend very little time on these side matters. I should, however,
mention one forgotten genius who, in fact, did not live long
enough to become well known. His name was L. Warren Seely.
He had never been to college, and, as is so often the case with
men so placed, he greatly exaggerated the value of a college
education. This man had an extremely bright mind and wrote
with great ability and charm. He was a patent lawyer and his
occupation irked him. One especial instance of his cleverness
sticks in my mind. We were calling together one night on some
girls. It was in the days of autograph albums, and one of the
girls said, "Oh, Mr. Seely, you are so clever, won't you write
something in my album?" And Seely sat down and spon-
taneously wrote the following lines:

When old Ulysses on his path of duty

Close by the Sirens' Islands sailed his ships,

He saw there forms of more than mortal beauty.
And heard celestial music from their lips.

'Tis said he sailed away, but I'm afraid

Had you been one of them he must have stayed.

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

I begged Seely to send this to Life. He protested, but finally
did so, and it was published. He received a check, I think,
for two dollars, which he kept as a souvenir and never cashed.

But enough about the Capitol Bicycle Club and about the tall
bicycle. That extraordinary machine was succeeded, after the
invention of the chain wheel, by the low-wheeled machines, and
for me, at least, the spirit of adventure in wheeling was lost.
But at the same time the tall bicycle and the bicycle organizations
constituted an early and very strong impetus to the Good Roads
Movement which, through the much later invention of the auto-
mobile, has revolutionized road travel in most countries. Con-
trast in your mind, if you can, the roads of today and those of
fifty years ago!

But time did not hang heavily on my hands outside of office
hours, even in the days before the bicycle. Mac Borden and I
were very fond of whist, and had played against each other
in interfraternity tournaments at Cornell. President Hayes was
in the White House, and one of his sons, Rutherford B. Hayes,
Jr., had also been at Cornell with us and had played for his
fraternity in the same tournaments. Young Hayes looked us
up during the first winter, and we played whist at the White
House at least once a week. We saw little of the President, but
Mrs. Hayes was a charming woman, who treated us quite as
members of the family and was utterly devoid of pretense.

Those were rather primitive days in Washington. The down-
town parts of the city had already been paved with asphalt, and
the early marked improvements carried out under Boss Shepard
had been finished, but the northwest quarter had not been devel-
oped, although the tendency was in that direction. Pennsylvania
Avenue and Seventh Street out as far as K Street were the only
important business thoroughfares, although shops were encroach-

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

ing on F Street. It seems strange to think o£ the present busy
F Street between Seventh and Fourteenth as still bordered in
part by residences. The First Congregational Church at the
corner of Tenth and G had been built, and a fine organ had
been installed. We often went there Sundays, to hear Professor
BischofI, the famous blind organist, and also to listen to the
excellent sermons preached by the Reverend Doctor Rankin.

Carl Schurz was then Secretary of the Interior, and people
spoke of his culture and of his ability as a pianist.

It is really surprising that a man can live in Washington as
I have for more than fifty years and yet see very little of
Congress, even though connected with a government department.
That may be due to my individual tastes. Politics has never
interested me as much as it should a good American citizen,
and the professional politician has not appealed to me as an
agreeable companion. In my boyhood, a professional politician
was not an agreeable person, even though he tried to be all things
to all men. Of late years the general average is higher, and many
admirable men have gone into politics and pushed to the front.

When I first came to Washington I was naturally interested
in Congress as one of the sights of the city, and several times
went to evening sessions and, from the galleries, watched the
men on the floors of both houses. In the House at that time were
several men of mark, notably James G. Blaine and L. Q. C.
Lamar, the leaders of the two sides of the chamber. I liked
Lamar, although he was a new type to me, as he was typically
Southern. Blaine I did not like from the start. On several occa-
sions I happened to see him acting in what I considered to be a
brutally discourteous manner, and that was probably the begin-
ning of an antipathy which continued until the time of his
death. A man in the House at that time whom I admired very
much was the Honorable J. D. Cox.

[6i]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

I also visited the Senate on several occasions (Blaine and
Lamar shortly vv^ent from the House to the Senate) . In the Senate
I was interested in John A. Logan and in Senator Vorhees, who
was then called the "Tall Sycamore of the Wabash," and who
was an orator of the florid type. The man who impressed me
most was George F. Edmunds of Vermont, who seemed to have
a very clear intellect and a tremendous grasp of all the subjects
that came up. I listened with intentness to everything that he
said. His adroitness in debate was extraordinary, and, as everyone
knows, he was the author of several laws of great importance.
It is curious to recollect that he impressed me at that time as a
venerable old man, already bald-headed, and with a nearly white
beard, but I learned many years later that he was still living (in
Pasadena, California), and in 1918 my friend, Dr. J. H. McBride,
of that city, told me that Edmunds was his neighbor and that
he frequendy called on him. He further said that at that time
he was intellectually as much alive as ever, although it was
forty years earlier when I had thought of him as a venerable
old man.

Both House and Senate in those days were largely composed of
veterans of the Civil War, From a cultural standpoint, they
did not rank high, but, though I was disappointed in the gen-
eral character of the men I saw on the floor of the House and
whom I occasionally met in the boarding-houses and at the
hotels, I reflected that each was a representative selected from
a hundred thousand or more American citizens, and that there
must be something in his character that brought him out of the
mass. The country at that time worshipped war heroes, and in
a democracy where there is universal suffrage the demagogue
naturally has a very good chance.

During this early period it happened that the alumni of
Cornell University who were living in Washington formed an

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

association, and I was one of the early presidents. Before our
first dinner I went through the Congressional Directory in order
to get an idea as to the number of men in Congress who were
college-bred. It was surprisingly small. If I am not mistaken,
there were not a dozen men in either house at that time who
had ever seen die inside of a college. But, of course, I remem-
bered that many of these men were fighting in the Civil War
during the years that some of them, at least, would have been
at college. I may state here incidentally that many years after-
wards—I think it was in 1913 or 1914— I went again over the
Congressional Directory with this point in mind and found that
then the proportion of college-bred men in Congress was very
much higher. The majority— a considerable majority— of the
men then serving had received some kind of college education,
and men from the principal universities of the country were very
much in evidence.

It must have been about 1881, when the House of Representa-
tives was discussing the combining of the Wheeler and the
Hayden Surveys mto the United States Geological Survey, diat
E. C. Manners, a charming and sophisticated Columbia graduate,
who was private secretary to Clarence King (chief of the
Wheeler Survey), asked me to go to the Capitol with him one
night to listen to the debate.

I recall only one incident, but it amused me greatly. A young-
ish member of Congress from Colorado (I have forgotten his
name) was discussing the bill in opposition. As I remember it,
he said substantially this:

"Upon whose advice are we supposed to take this action? On
that of the so-called National Academy of Sciences ? What is this
National Academy? A scientific organization is usually judged
by the character of its publications. Now, what has this Academy
published? So far as Mr. Spoffard, the Librarian of Congress,

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

can tell me, it has published (at the Government Printing Office —
at Government expense!) only a short series of biographic
accounts o£ deceased members. Now, I put it to you, gentlemen,
if this futile and pointless body of mutual flatterers attempts to
interfere with the actions of the law-makers of this great people,
would it not have been far better for the United States if the
number of laudatory obituaries had been far greater than it
is?"

As a much later member of the Academy, and as a writer of
one of these biographical accounts (that of Stephen A. Forbes),
I am now in a position to appreciate that speech even better
than at that time.

The mention of E. C. Manners reminds me that once, when
we were walking along a Washington street, I made a quotation
from something or other, and he remarked in his supercilious
way, "It's astonishing how many people there are with just
enough knowledge to misquote!" This remark rankled until
later I discovered that his statement itself was a misquotation!

And, speaking of the Academy of Sciences, I always recall a
remark made by Professor J. McKecn Cattell, referring to the
springtime beauty of Washington: "The best reason known to
me for the existence of the National Academy of Sciences is
that it meets in Washington during the third week in April
each year!" Nevertheless, we are all proud of the Academy and
its beautiful building and its vigorous and useful child — the
National Research Council. It is not so old as the Royal Society
of England nor as the Academie des Sciences of France, nor as
the Academia dei Lincei of Rome, but it ranks as one of the
foremost National Academies of Science in the world.

And as for the United States Geological Survey, it has justified
its existence, and the bill which the member for Colorado was
opposing has proved its value a thousand times.

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

One more Congressional incident apropos to this general
subject. Fifty years ago the final reading of the Appropriations
Bill for the Department of the Interior was before the House,
and I happened to be in the Visitors' Gallery. The Honorable
J. D. Cox of Ohio, Chairman of the Appropriations Committee
(and himself a naturalist), had the bill in charge and was mak-
ing slight verbal corrections and corrections in punctuation, to
which the members were perfunctorily and sleepily agreeing.
Coming to the portion on the Hayden Survey of the Territories,
and to the paragraph relating to permission to publish, he sug-
gested the addition of the words "and the allied sciences" to
the words "on geology," and the House assented without
awakening. This enabled the publication by the government of
many important monographs which would have seemed trivial
and possibly useless to the then average congressional intelligence.

Since those days, fortunately. Congress has become better edu-
cated in such matters, and here and there in the House and in
the Senate are to be found men with a keen appreciation of the
value of practically all sorts of scientific work — many, in fact,
who realize that research work without an immediate practical
end is quite worth while and worthy of even government
support.

But my initial interest in Congress didn't last. Holding an
assistant's position in a small department, I had nothing to do
with the appropriations which were then handled entirely for
our department by the Commissioner of Agriculture. In fact, the
Department did not develop to the point where the Commis-
sioner, or later the Secretary, needed any assistance before the
Agricultural Committee until after I became Chief of the Bureau
in 1894. Before that time my chief. Professor Riley, was always
worrying about appropriations, and, without the consent of his
superior officer, was constantly pulling wires of different kinds

[65]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

to get more money. I remember that once in the i88o's he was
out of town when the Appropriation Bill was about to be re-
ported and that he telegraphed me to call on Congressman
Hatch o£ Missouri (the author of the Hatch Act, under which
all the State Experiment Stations of the country were founded),
who was then Chairman of the Agricultural Committee of the
House, and urge him to use his influence for a certain small
appropriation. I found Congressman Hatch in his rooms on the
second story of a building on F Street, I think between Tenth
and Eleventh, where he was living with his family. He came
out into the room that was used as a parlor to see me — a bluff,
democratic, Western sort of man — and told me very plainly that
he had no opinion of my chief and that he would better stay in
Washington and attend to his business than go to Florida on
a junket.

On a later occasion, when Professor Riley was in Europe, the
appropriation for entomological work seemed to be in danger.
It happened that Dr. C. Hart Merriam had just come to Wash-
ington to undertake work on the food habits of native birds
as a branch of the division of entomology. He did not like Riley,
but he was a great friend of mine and told me that he would
go with me to his cousin, Warner Miller, who was then U. S.
Senator from New York. We went together in the evening to
call on Senator Miller in a beautiful house on K Street near
Fourteenth. I found the Senator a charming and well-educated
gentleman, who told me that, while he did not approve of Pro-
fessor Riley, he knew that the work was important, and that
he would do what he could to put the appropriation through.
He succeeded. I think that those were the only two bits of lobby-
ing I ever tried to do.

While we are on the subject of Congress and Congressmen,

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

I may as well go further, although it takes the story out of its
chronological order.

Shortly after I became Chief of the Service, Congressman
Wadsworth of New York (father of the later Senator Wads-
worth of New York) was Chairman of the Agricultural Com-
mittee of the House. He conceived the idea that it was his duty
to know more about the workings of the Department than had
been the custom with chairmen of that special committee. One
day, therefore, he appeared at the Department with four or five
other members of the committee (one of whom was John Sharp
Williams, later U. S. Senator from Mississippi, a great speaker
and one of the personahties of the Senate), and went through
all the bureaus, going into the insectary, looking at the insect
breeding in the cages and examining all the details of the work.
The next year he had the chiefs of the different branches appear
one after anodier before the committee to explain fully what
they were trying to do and why they wanted the amounts o£
money that were estimated. From that year, which must have
been about 1896, such hearings have been held at the beginning
of every session of Congress.

These hearings were very trying to the bureau chiefs, partly
on account of the ignorance of many members of the committee
— an ignorance, in most cases, combined with egotism and pride
of place— and partly on account of the fact that they put the
Bureau Chief in the position of a defendant at the bar, apparently
taking the stand (and many of the committee men were country
lawyers) that there was some graft going on and that it was
their duty to expose it. Doubtless this attitude on the part of
members, which the Bureau Chiefs used to resent, was largely
a matter of imagination, and really as time went on it grew less
every year. It became obvious, in fact, that many of the members
of the committee were very earnest in their desire to do what

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

was right by the country and by the department and to inform
themselves as accurately as possible concerning what was going
on. Nevertheless, the task continued to be an onerous one for the
Bureau Chief, and he found himself in a distressing position
when he was not accurately informed upon every subject that
came up and not able to answer cleverly and satisfactorily every
question that was asked him, whether pertinent or not. I have
myself wriggled internally under such conditions, and, with a
sort of malicious joy, have watched other Bureau Chiefs wrig-
gling when I happened in toward the end of one hearing or
stayed on into the beginning of another.

The general effect of these hearings, however, is very good.
Twelve or fifteen years ago, when I happened to be in the
Secretary of Agriculture's antechamber, ex-Congressman James
Wadsworth entered with a tall, smooth-faced young man. He
greeted me with his usual cordiality and introduced the young
man with great pride as his son, the newly elected Senator from
New York. The young Senator said that he knew me well by
reputation and remembered with the greatest interest that once
years ago, when he was on a vacation from Yale College and
had come down to visit his father, he went with him to one of
these meetings of the Committee on Agriculture. He said that
he listened to the statements by the Bureau Chiefs with the most
intense interest, and that he considered the general education he
gained in that way was rather better than anything he got at
Yale.

One funny incident that happened while Mr. Wadsworth was
Chairman of the Committee was in the early part of the century,
when the first application was made to Congress for a consider-
able appropriation to fight the Cotton Boll Weevil. I had had
a large papier-mache model made of the weevil. It was about
two feet long, and I had it sent up to the Committee room in

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

a dry goods box. When Mr. Wadsworth said, "We will now
hear from Dr. Howard about this appropriation for the Cotton
Boll Weevil," I took the cover from the box, lifted out the model
and put it on the table in front of me. Captain Lamb of Virginia
(then a member and afterwards chairman of the Committee)
turned with amazement to Congressman Burleson of Texas
(later Postmaster General), and said, "My God, Burleson, is it
as big as that.?"

Mr. Wadsworth, by the way, was a Congressman of the very
highest type. He afterwards had trouble with President Roose-
velt, and there was a newspaper spat between them that was
very warm.

During the early days of the Cotton Boll Weevil investigation
I had rather disagreeable experiences with several of the Southern
members of Congress who wanted the headquarters for the in-
vestigation located in their districts. In fact, as the service was
extended and other large projects were taken up, I had other
disagreeable experiences of this kind, not only in the location
of stations, but in moving the stations from one point to another
when it became necessary.

I should explain that it became the policy of the Bureau rather
early to carry the laboratory to the problem rather than the
problem to the laboratory. Having arrived at a satisfactory agree-
ment with the state authorities, a proper point in the field was
picked by the expert in charge of the investigation, a house or a
small farm or both would be rented at some strategic point,
assistants would be sent there, and supplies would be bought.
And then, when it seemed desirable to change the location, this
place was given up and another one found. But the inhabitants
of a country community do not wish to lose these stations, and
they naturally appeal to their members of Congress. Many a
time I have had a Congressman come and argue the question

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with me and then go to appeal from me to the Secretary of
Agriculture. In the case of some large stations he might even go
to the President of the United States and appeal from the Secre-
tary of Agriculture. I believe that such men have alw^ays been
referred back to the Secretary, and by him back to me, and of
course I relied entirely on the judgment of my field assistants.
I actually had one Congressman tell me once at my desk, with
his voice trembling, that his reelection depended upon his success
in retaining a certain station for a certain district. Surely the
Congressman has a hard time!

I think I have already mentioned the fact that when I first
came to Washington political influence was paramount and that
almost every clerk had his backer in Congress and held his place
so long as he held the good opinion of his or her special Con-
gressman. This was before the days of the Civil Service Com-
mission. Conditions were about as bad as they possibly could be.
I am sure that Congressmen themselves felt a decided sense of
relief when the first Civil Service Commission took office since
they could tell all office-seekers that their Congressmen could be
of no help and they must pass the examinations. I have heard
that the idea "to the victor belong the spoils" still holds with
certain of the states, and that office-holders are not only political
partisans but are contributors to campaign funds. I have already
stated that the first year I was in Washington I was asked to
contribute one month's salary to the campaign fund. Imagine
a man with a family on a salary of one hundred dollars a month
obliged to meet a demand like that!

Probably one reason why I have seen so little of Congressmen
is because I have spent so much of my spare time at the Cosmos
Club, and there you very seldom see a Congressman. In the early
days of the Club there was only one member from the Hill, and
he was Congressman Everett from Massachusetts, an old school-

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

master, and I think at one time a Harvard professor— a retiring
man of much culture and rather out of place in Congress, though
quite at home at the Club. Later WiUiam E. Chandler, a brilliant
man who had been United States Senator and a member of the
Cabinet, was proposed for membership but was blackballed by
some of the Survey men on the ground that he had successfully
opposed one of their appropriations when he was in the Senate.
Of course it was a disgraceful thing to do and was a blot on the
fair record of the Club. Senator Chandler was a brilliant man
and one of the most interesting individuals I have ever met.
He used to come to the Club very often as a visitor before this
incident, and it was a liberal education to hear him talk to a
group of men.

Later, as the Club became rather broader, blackballing by
members was done away with, and a number of Congressmen
passed the Committee— William Kent of California, later a mem-
ber of the Tariff Board; John J. Fitzgerald of Brooklyn, at that
time Chairman of the Appropriations Committee; Townsend
of New Jersey, an old newspaper man and author of the "Chim-
mie Fadden" stories; Senator Owen of Oklahoma, a man of very
broad culture; Small of North Carolina, a quiet, retiring indi-
vidual but a delightful man when you drew him out; Redfield
of Brooklyn, later Secretary of Commerce, a wonderfully able
man of commercial training and one of the most eloquent speak-
ers I ever heard; Dr. H. W. Temple of Pennsylvania, a cultured
man who had been a college professor; and perhaps a dozen or
more others who need not be mentioned.

Since the William E. Chandler incident, I believe that there
have been no unpleasantnesses connected with such memberships.
I remember to have heard, however, that Uncle Joe Cannon,
who was a frequent visitor at the Club, once said in a speech,
"I know of a certain club in Washington where more schemes

[71]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

are hatched against the United States Treasury than in any other
one place."

The thirteen years o£ 1881 to 1894, filHng the time between
Comstock's departure and Riley's resignation as Chief of the
Service, must not be dismissed summarily, since it was a time
of achievement as well as of development and education. In the
last chapter I have mentioned what was perhaps the crowning
achievement of Riley's second regime, namely the introduction
of the Australian Ladybird, which really started the important
line of natural control work. But there were other rather big
things.

A notable one, now almost forgotten, was the solving of the
problem of the hop plant-louse. Although it was only one of
several important studies, it had interesting and unique features.
This was long before the sad days of Prohibition. The beer-
manufacturing industry was very important. Hops were grown
extensively in many regions, although the landscape was not
dotted with hop yards as, for example, are certain regions in
Kent and in the country south of Budapest. The largest centers
of hop production in the States were probably in portions of
New York, Wisconsin and Washington. It had been known in
England that the worst insect pest of the hop crop, namely the
hop plant-louse, occurred both on the hop and on the plum.
But its rather extraordinary life history had not been worked out.
Riley started an investigation which was successfully carried on
by his assistants to a rather brilliant conclusion. The field work
was done at Richfield Springs, New York, practically wholly by
Theodor Pergande, who spent the better part of 1886 at that
point. Professor Riley was in Europe at the time, and I visited
the field in the summer of 1886 to check up Pergande's observa-
tions. W. B. AUwood was there, engaged largely on the subject

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

of sprays and spraying machinery. But the result of Pergande's
work completely negatived the necessity of sprays on the hop
crop. And this was the first experience that started in my mind
the idea that while sprays are of temporary value, that value lasts
only until the entomologist is able by his life history studies to
find something cheaper and easier and more natural, which will
bring about a more perfect control. In other words, while we
welcome the activity of the spray machine manufacturers, at
least temporarily, are we really not trying to put them out of
business.?

The result of all the work here was to show that the plum is
the necessary secondary host of the plant-louse. The plum, of
course, is a perennial, while the hop vine is an annual. The
winter eggs of the plant-louse are laid upon the plum in the
autumn. In the spring they hatch, and there comes forth a gen-
eration of wingless virgin females but no males. These females
are called the stem mothers. They give birth to living young that
feed upon the sap of the plum leaves. Growth is very rapid and
there soon develops a generation of virgin females that are
winged. By that time the hop crop has been planted, and all of
this new winged generation fly to the hop (deserting the plum)
and give birth parthenogenetically to successive generations of
wingless females, all feeding upon the hop leaves and frequently
blighting the crop. Then, about the time of hop-picking, a
winged generation (all females) comes forth and flies back to
the plum trees. From these there comes a generation composed
of both males and females, and from this generation comes the
winter egg on the plum. What an extraordinary thing! The
removal of all plum trees near the hop yard or the destruction
of the lice on the plum in the spring by means of sprays perhaps
will free the ensuing hop yard from all possible danger from
this source.

[73]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

Careful studies by later students of plant-lice have turned up
many life histories as interesting as this, showing a relation be-
tween annual and perennial plants as to their plant-louse popula-
tions.

While this study showed a comparatively easy method of
control, I think that perhaps it was this close and accurate in-
vestigation of plant-louse methods of life (although already
known in a general way) that really started me thinking about
insect possibilities. And I was hardly astonished when Professor
Glen W. Herrick brought out his extraordinary calculation that
the ponderable mass of the offspring of a single cabbage aphis
in five months' time in Central New York would, without acci-
dent or control, exceed the ponderable mass of all humanity on
the globe by at least five times.

[74]

chapter TV

L

iFE in Washington at that early time was not expensive,
and it seems to me that the government clerks got along very
w^ell, in fact, quite as well as they do today, on what seem now
pitifully small salaries. The one hundred dollars a month that
was all I got for the first few years was ample. In fact, I put
forty dollars of it in the savings bank each month for the
first year. The room that Mac Borden and I lived in cost us ten
dollars a month each, and there were several restaurants that
gave us very good meals for twenty-five cents each. I remember
especially one called the Holly Tree Inn, on Ninth Street just
below F. It was kept by a dear lady named Mrs. La Fetra, whose
husband was a pleasant bearded man, a clerk in the Post Office
Department. They had a little boy who, I think, has grown up
to be some distinguished person. Another restaurant that I re-
member very well was Fred Evans', on F Street between Ninth
and Tenth. It seems to me that he raised his price to thirty-five
cents a meal, and that it was considered to be rather a spree to
dine there. I

Living for us was very simple, you see, and the married clerks
got along very well, too. A good colored maid-of-all-work could
be had for ten dollars a month or even less, and some of them

[75]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

were fine. A very fair six-room house could be rented for twenty-
five dollars a month, and I never heard any of my married
friends in the departments complain seriously about financial
difficulties.

All salaries under the government were small. My friends
were mainly among the young fellows recently graduated from
college, and most of them were connected with the more or less
scientific branches, such as the Smithsonian, the National Mu-
seum, the Geological and Topographical Surveys, the Coast and
Geodetic Survey, or the Topographic Division of the Post Office
Department. Some of them were in the Patent Office and the
Land Office. Then, too, there were some who were studying law
or medicine, who held temporarily any clerkships they could get.
It was a simple, happy life.

When a man married he needed a little more money, and so
he began to reach out and do different things. Among others I
felt this necessity. When I married in 1886 my salary was raised
to eighteen hundred dollars, which was not bad when you con-
sider that the Chief of the Service got only twenty-five hundred
dollars. But opportunities for making outside sums began to
open up. Professor Riley, although his salary was so small, had
married into a family of means and had no financial worries.
He was, however, in many ways the foremost light of his kind
in the country, and was occasionally asked to write articles for
journals of one kind or another.

I remember for example that the Youths' Companion asked
him to do a series of illustrated articles on household insects.
He got me to write them for him, signed them and sent them in.
They were published, and he gave me half the money, which I
was very glad to get. This seemed all right to me at the time,
since his prominent name was surely worth that much to the
journal.

[76]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

And now I think I must say something about the Century
Dictionary. About 1885, when the Century Company was plan-
ning its great dictionary, they appointed Dr. EUiot Coues as
Zoological Editor. He was one o£ the foremost men in the public
eye at that time. He looked about for illustrations, and was
recommended to use the beautiful woodcuts belonging to
Professor Riley, which the latter had made to illustrate his
Missouri reports. He had been wise enough to have them done
at his own expense, so that he still owned the original blocks.
The Century Company paid him a large price for electrotypes
of these blocks, and he sold them with the proviso that he
should write the definitions of the words so illustrated. During
the winter of 1885-86 he worked a little at these definitions with
the assistance of E. A. Schwarz and myself, and when he went to
Paris as die representative of the Department of Agriculture at
the French Exposition of that year he told me to go ahead and
finish up the definitions for him and to help Dr. Coues out in
any way I could. It was evidently his understanding that he was
to remain the entomological contributor of the dictionary, and
that I was to receive only perfunctory acknowledgment if any.
I called on Dr. Coues shortly after Riley's departure, and found
him in Dr. Theodore Gill's room in one of the towers of the
Smithsonian Institution. I turned over to him some definitions
of words illustrated by the Riley cuts, but he stopped me as I
was going out of the door and asked me whether I had written
them myself or whether Riley had. I told him that I had done
them after Riley's departure, and he remarked that evidently I
was just the man he was looking for. He told me he knew Riley
had no knowledge of many things that a dictionary man should
know, and he asked me if I would take over the entomology on
my own account under him. I said that I would, and I did all
of the entomological definitions from that time on.

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

The business manager of the dictionary at that time was Dr.
Benjamin E. Smith. He had a cousin, Herbert H. Smith, who
was a great collector of insects and had made several expeditions
to South America and the West Indies, where he had got a vast
amount of material, some of which is now at Cornell University
and more at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. He also made
afterwards the collections on St. Vincent and Granada for the
British Association for the Advancement of Science. The bulk
of that material is now in the British Museum of Natural His-
tory. It should be noted here that the Chalcididce of this St.
Vincent collection were afterwards monographed by Dr. W. H.
Ashmead and myself, that the Granada Chalcididce were turned
over to me, and that at a much later date I published a paper
on them in one of the English Transactions.

Owing to this relationship between Benjamin E. Smith and
Herbert H. Smidi, Herbert had been employed at some en-
tomological definitions before I took hold. These occur only
in the first part of the original twenty-six parts of the dictionary.

In talking over the general style of the definitions. Dr. Coues
made this extraordinary remark to me: "You need not confine
yourself to words actually in existence, but if you think of any
useful new word put it in," And this remark suggests a digres-
sion. Some years later. Professor E. B. Poulton, arriving in this
country from Oxford during one of Riley's frequent absences
from the United States, said to me, "By the way, Howard, Pro-
fessor Murray, while engaged in his work upon the great Oxford
Dictionary, has found certain words in the Century Dictionary
which he is unable to trace, and, knowing that I was coming
to this country, he wrote me a letter in which he said that these
words must have been invented by some Yankee schoolmaster
who had a penchant for invention and had seized the chance
'to inflict new atrocities upon the English language.' " And then

[78]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

Poulton showed me the list. He was surprised when I told him
that I was the man who wrote the definitions, but he was still
more surprised when, after looking at the list of words, I told
him that I had found them all in Kirby and Spence, a classical
English work published about 1834. I wrote an explanation to
Professor Murray, and received a courteous reply, but he evi-
dently never knew that I had seen his letter to Poulton.

I think I will allow myself to step aside from the dictionary
for a moment. When I first came to Washington, in the fall
of 1878, I brought with me, among other letters of introduction,
one to Dr. Coues from Burt G. Wilder. I called on him and was
received pleasantly. After chatting a few moments, I told him
that I was assisting Riley, and then left. As it happened, while
working with Wilder and Gage during my post-graduate year at
Cornell, I had become much interested in the general subject of
vestigial structures, inspired by one I had found while dissecting
a still-born infant. I had looked up the general subject in the
University Library and had started a small card catalogue of such
structures. I had, I think, twenty or thirty references. When it
appeared during the spring of 1879 that Riley was likely to use
me quite as much as a clerk as a laboratory assistant, I thought
about going back into medicine, and called on Dr. Coues again
to see if he could give me further references to this anatomical
line of work. I found him in a bad humor, in an office across
Pennsylvania Avenue — on Tenth Street, I think. He received me
brusquely and I explained my errand. "Oh, why? I thought you
were an entomologist and not an anatomist." I held out my
twenty or thirty cards, and he said, "Humph, do you call that
a bibliography? Look here" — and he pointed to an array of
card cases — "here are twenty thousand cards, forming my bibli-
ography of North American birds." I was very much abashed

[79]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

and left as speedily as possible. I had not seen him from that
day until the Century Dictionary call.

I worked on the dictionary at odd times until it was completed,
and my relations with Coues were extremely pleasant. He was
a very extraordinary and very eccentric man. After he married
his second wife, he had a beautiful furnished house on N Street,
between Seventeenth and Eighteenth, and no matter how late
in the evening I called I found him at work in his study, with
a coffee-pot and with innumerable cigarette butts scattered about,
but always ready for a chat. He pretended to be interested in
Spiritualism and was a great friend of Madame Blavatsky. Before
he died he told me that his Spiritualism was only a pose, and
that he was really slyly investigating Spiritualism and Theosophy,

As the dictionary approached its close, he went through Scud-
der's "Nomenclator Zoologicus," and discovered that the last
word was entomological. In great glee he said to me, "You are
going to have the honor to define the last word in the English
language." I asked him what it was and he told me that it was
Zyxomma. It would be difficult to follow that if one were to
preserve alphabetic order. I told him that it was the name of a
very obscure genus that had no business in the dictionary, and
he said that that did not make any difference. "For the honor
of Zoology we must have the last word." Curiously enough, two
years later. Captain Prince, the librarian of the Patent Office,
told me one night that his son had come home from school and
told him that his teacher had instructed the class that they must
bring in next day the definition of the last word in the English
language. The boy asked his father what that word was. The
Captain told me that it gave him great joy to tell the boy that
he knew the word and that he knew the man who wrote the
definition. The boy, undoubtedly, as boys will, told the others the
next day in a boy's boasting way that his father knew the man

[80]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

who wrote the definition of the last word in the Enghsh
language. So in at least one very small way Coues was justified.

Several amusing things happened in the course of the dic-
tionary work. For example, one of the resonant words selected by
Coues and sent over to me was Dundubia. It was easy of defini-
tion, but when it came to its etymology I was stumped. I
searched for all possible Greek and Latin origins, and then wrote
on the margin, under the head of Etymology, "Try Sanskrit,"
in much the same way that one would say, "It's all Greek to me."
Some weeks afterwards Benjamin E. Smith wrote me, "Pro-
fessor Whitney [a great philologist of Yale, who was the
Philological Editor of the dictionary] decides that you are right
in deriving this word from the Sanskrit. It comes from the
Sanskrit Dundub, which means a drum." As Dundubia is a
genus of Cicadas — insects that make a peculiar drumming noise
in the trees — the applicability of the name was obvious, I after-
wards found out that the French authors, Amayot and Serville,
who wrote many papers on the insects of this group, had lived
in India, knew many Sanskrit words, and had used several of
them in their nomenclature. I hope that Professor Whitney
finally died in the full belief that I was a Sanskrit scholar.

The whole work was extremely interesting and had a high
educational value. Things that I learned then have been of
service to me in many ways. Then, too, the extra money was
a great help. It brought me in, say, from twenty to fifty dollars
a month for a long time. Years later I helped in the revision,
made some changes, introduced a good many new words, and
made some more money. It is a very good thing to have been
connected with a dictionary of this high character and to have
had dealings with such courteous and generous people as there
were in the New York office.

Later, on request, I contributed several articles to the Century

[8i]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

Magazine, and still later the Company published two o£ my
books.

After this beginning with the Century Dictionary, I was able
to get enough outside work to keep my family going. I worked
on the Standard Dictionary, and also wrote many articles for
the New International Encyclopedia and did a lot of other work
of that general character.

And then there were not infrequent magazine articles and
lectures, and of course the Insect Book and the Mosquito Book
in 1901 and the House Fly Disease Carrier in 191 1.

I mentioned lectures in the last paragraph. Like so many
young men, I was especially self-conscious, in fact, awkwardly
so, before any kind of an audience, although, judging from some
of the men I have known, mine was not an extreme ca:e. I had
always dreaded anything of the sort in college and could not
hold my own in a public debate. As time went on in Washing-
ton, I read papers before scientific societies there and elsewhere,
but I had never dared attempt a lecture without manuscript. My
knees trembled at the very thought.

It must have been in the very early spring of 1898 that I
received a letter from Dr. J. M. Taylor, the president of Vassar
College. Dr. Taylor was not only a very charming man, but
he was a very wise one. He had thought out a plan that I think
was unique for a college president. He made up his mind that
the students at Vassar did not know enough about the intimate
details of their government, and decided that he would go to
Washington and stay, if possible, at the Cosmos Club. There
he felt sure he would meet men who were doing big things
for the government in a quiet way, and he thought he could
induce some of them to come up to Poughkeepsie and tell the
girls about it. So he came down, and I put him up at the Club
and introduced him to just the men he expected to meet.

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

The result was that I was one of the men invited to go to
Vassar the next year. I knew that it was a chance that I should
not avoid, and that I must learn to talk to an audience without
manuscript. So I thought that I would begin in a gradual way
at Poughkeepsie. I prepared a manuscript that would take about
a half-hour to read and then planned to use the remaining half-
hour in talking with lantern slides. When I reached the college
it was about dinner time, and I dined with Dr. Taylor and
some of the professors at a table in the big college dining-room.
I asked the President in an offhand way what kind of an
audience I could expect, and my fears were not at all appeased
by his reply, which was to the effect that it was either the best
audience in the world or the worst — that it all depended on
whether you caught their interest at the start.

Then we went into the big chapel, and I was introduced to the
amazingly attractive roomful of girls. I placed my manuscript
on the reading desk — a temporary sort of thing. It was apparently
an old music stand that screwed up somewhere near its middle.
I made a few opening remarks, leaning my elbow on the tricky
pedestal, and as I did so, the darned old thing gave way and the
manuscript fluttered all over the place. Here accidentally was an
incident sure to attract the interest of those girls, and how they
did laugh! I looked at the manuscript in sheer despair and
remarked that, after all, I imagined that was the best place for it.
I went on with the lecture, and the audience was very apprecia-
tive. The best of it was that I gained great confidence in myself
and have never used a manuscript in any public talk since. I
have always felt very kindly toward Vassar, and many years
later my youngest daughter graduated there. She was not born
at the time of this incident.

After that chances to give lectures multiplied, and during the
next thirty or more years I gave a large number, some of them

[83]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

at universities and others before all sorts of organizations, and
I have grown to enjoy it. For many years I have not felt a trace
of embarrassment before an audience. This lecturing, however,
has not been frequent enough to interfere with my official work.
In fact, it has helped very much to make it better known, and
incidentally it has helped the family in its yearly expenses — not
much, but enough so that it has counted.

By this time I had become interested in the carriage of disease
by insects, and about the beginning of the century I gave many
talks before medical societies, city improvement associations and
health organizations about this important subject.

Among the most interesting and surely the most remunerative
of the lectures I gave were those before the Lowell Institute in
Boston in the early spring of 1902. I had heard much of the
Lowell Institute and had read many of the lectures given there
by famous men and was therefore immensely flattered and de-
lighted when dear old Dr. William T. Sedgwick, the Curator of
the Institute, wrote me with Mr. Lowell's consent and asked me
to give eight lectures on Economic Entomology. I don't know
how those lectures are carried on nowadays — possibly in much
the same way — ^but in those days they were held in one of the
old buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on
Berkeley Street. The audience had to be seated at eight o'clock,
for the doors were then locked and the lecture began. At nine
o'clock the doors were unlocked, and people could leave whether
the lecture was finished or not. I suppose that the time tables of
suburban trains accounted for this regulation, but it took a
mighty interesting lecture to keep people there after nine.

My lectures were illustrated by very good lantern slides, and
in the eight I covered all of the field of Economic Entomology
that was known at that time. I remember that the first one was
on the subject of the carriage of disease by insects. Mr. and

[84]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

Mrs. Lowell were seated immediately in front of me, and with
their charming courtesy they managed to appear interested until
the close. I was a little annoyed by the slowness of the lantern
operator, but Sedgwick explained to me that he was an elderly
negro who had been running the lantern for years, and that
he thought he knew how to do it better than the lecturer did.
I was a little afraid of the people in my audience as they looked
so preternaturally intelligent; and I was very serious during the
first seven lectures. Just before entering the hall to give the last
lecture, however, Sedgwick gave me Mr. Lowell's check for
twelve hundred dollars, and with this in my pocket I felt
exhilarated and able to take liberties even with a Lowell Insti-
tute audience. To my surprise, they liked it and seemed to enjoy
my stories so much that I told many of them. Even the Boston
Transcript spoke next day with especial favor of that last lecture,
informal as it was.

In mentioning the Lowell Institute audience I am reminded of
an incident. I spent the five weeks during this lecture course at
the St. Botolph Club, and on one of the off nights after dinner,
in one of the reading rooms, I heard two men, sitting not far
from me, discussing some subject rather vigorously. One of
them said, "I tell you, my friend, the world is full of sham, and
I think that Boston's pretense to intellectuality is large part sham.
Look at lots of the things you see around us here. Take the
Lowell Institute lectures, for example. A lot of people go there
because they think they ought to. They listen to a whole lot of
uninteresting and sometimes absurd statements and look owlishly
wise, and then go home and say to themselves, 'What superior
people we are.' "

I could not help overhearing the man and listened with a very
amused interest. I caught the eye of the other one, who hap-

[85]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

pened to be Dr. Woods of the Harvard Medical College, and he
called me over.

"Dr. Howard," he said, "I want you to know Mr. Wilton
Lockwood, one of our foremost artists. Mr. Lockwood, this is
Dr. Howard of Washington, who is now giving a course of
lectures before the Lowell Institute."

Lockwood was not at all abashed and at once asked whether
I had heard what he had just said, and when I said that I had he
went on to say that he would not take it back and that he firmly
believed it all. But then, somewhat apologetically, he went on to
say that, after all, that frame of mind was by no means confined
to Boston, that there were plenty of similar shams elsewhere,
and plenty of intellectually or culturally pretentious people in
other parts of the country.

"For example," he said, "over in the Catskill Mountains there
is an organization known as the Onteora Club, where a lot of
writers and artists and their admirers have built a stone wall
around themselves and have assumed a holier-than-thou feeling
that is displeasing to their neighbors and to people like us who
see clearly."

My rejoinder was difficult, but I really had to tell him that I
was a charter member of the Onteora Club. He shrugged his
shoulders, said good night and went to bed. Was there really
anything else he could do at the moment.''

The next morning he joined me at breakfast. (He lived out of
town and was staying a few days at the Club.) As he sat down
he said, "I'm afraid that I owe you an apology. I really know
about the Onteora Club only from hearsay, and I may be very
badly informed. But I insist that I was right about the Lowell
Institute audience."

Of course I told him all about the Onteora Club (the real
truth), and we had a very pleasant talk together. It turned out

[86]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

that in addition to being a famous painter, he was greatly inter-
ested in raising ducks and he told me especially about the spoon-
bill variety. He said that their bills are so shaped that they skim
off things on or near the surface of the water and that in
this way they swallow many mosquito larvae.

I am constantly reminding myself that this is "The Story of
an Entomologist," not the story of his family life, or of a lot of
other things that I have told about that might be thought
extraneous. But they will work in, and some of them, I am sure,
are fairly interesting.

I have said that in 1886 I married, and I think I should say a
litde about this. I married a very charming girl who lived in
Washington and whose parents came originally from Maryland.
The bald facts are that I built a little house in Washington
Heights in which we lived for a time and then moved to old
Georgetown. My wife was very musical and so was I. For six
years we had no children, and then at intervals of four years
our three daughters were born, all in Georgetown. In 1901 we
moved back to northwest Washington and lived there for many
years. There has been almost nothing in our family life that would
be of interest to anyone but ourselves, but it has been a very
happy one. Mrs. Howard died in 1926, but the three daughters
are rather remarkable and very delightful and mean a great
deal to me.

There is one thing, however, that rather stands out and that Is,
after our first daughter was born, we built a little summer house
in the Catskill Mountains in a community that has come to be
known as die Onteora Club. This colony was founded by an
aunt and an uncle of mine, Mrs. Candace Wheeler and Francis
B. Thurber. Of course this is the club spoken of in the preced-
ing anecdote about Mr. Wilton Lockwood. This summer home

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

has been of great advantage to all of us. Through it we have
met many distinguished and delightful people, including many
writers, artists, and other persons of note. The children grew up
there from babyhood, and I think that during school days they
looked upon Onteora as their real home and Washington simply
as the place where they had to go to school. I was never able to
spend much time there myself until I retired in 1927, since
summer was always my busiest time. But every year I usually
managed to put in a week or ten days up there during which
time I formed many friendships. I need not mention any of the
fine people who have been going there for years and who are
members of the Club, for it has been done many times, most
recently, perhaps, by Hamlin Garland in one or two of his later
volumes.

Inasmuch as we have touched upon the subject of ways and
means in this chapter, I must point out that to a certain extent
my own experiences and life in Washington for so many years
must have been to a certain extent typical of the average govern-
ment employee, more particularly of those engaged in some one
of the scientific bureaus. And this leads me to say something
about the wives of these men. Here and there a man of means has,
with his wife, shared the rather odd social life of Washington,
but such cases have been rare. Nearly all of the scientific people
have been comparatively poor, dependent almost solely on a small
government salary. I have known, in one way or another, many
of the wives, and I never knew what may be called a "social
struggler" among them. They have been wrapped up in their
husbands' scientific careers, and have made every necessary sacri-
fice gladly, without pointing out, and apparently without realiz-
ing, that they were making such sacrifices. I bow before these
women with great admiration, and I wonder if their husbands
fully realize what their wives have done for them. When one

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

stops to think of it, there is a lot of pathos in the Uves of many
of these women, but after all, is there not pathos in the lives of
most women? Most of them put on such brave faces that they
do not appear to realize it and isn't it lucky for their husbands
that this is so?

[89]

chapter V

W

T V h:

HEN I was told in June, 1931, that the great Capper Award
had been made to me, largely because o£ my special interest in
promoting that side of "natural control" that depends upon the
work of parasitic and predatory insects, I began to wonder to
just how much of the credit I was really entitled. It is true that
I had made many investigations concerning Hymenopterous
parasites and had begun the study of a limited but important
group as early as 1879. This happened in a perfectly natural way.
When Professor Comstock was at the Department of Agriculture
at Washington, in 1879, we were rearing certain insects in order
to learn their life histories, and in doing this we reared many
parasites in our breeding cages. There was no one in the United
States who had studied any of these creatures except E. T.
Cresson who had described many of our Ichneumon flies. The
smaller Chalcis flies of this country were practically unknown.
So I took up their study and began to describe new species. In
1880 I wrote a paper describing the parasites of the scale-insects,
to accompany Comstock's report on these important plant ene-
mies. In the introduction to this report I pointed out the ease
with which such parasites could be carried from one point to
another to help in destruction of the pests in places where para-

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

sites were lacking, and I soon began a card catalogue of the
recorded host-relationships of these useful insects, which com-
prised the whole world.

A few years later, rather significantly, my address as retiring
president of the Entomological Society of Washington, in 1884,
was entitled : "A Commencement of the Study of the Parasites of
Cosmopolitan Insects," and in it I discussed the general question
and printed tables indicating the extent of our knowledge of such
forms at that time, so far as I had been able to bring them to-
gether from the literature.

From that time on I wrote more or less frequently on the
subject, and not only continued the great catalogue, but began
to see many opportunities for the promotion of natural control
work of this kind.

Of course there had been earlier suggestions of this general
nature, and these have been referred to by Marchal and by Sil-
vestri in their very much later publications on this general subject.
And then, in 1888, came the extraordinary verification of the
value of natural control in the introduction and acclimatization
of the Australian Ladybird in Southern California. This extraor-
dinary and now famous success, which undoubtedly saved the
citrus growing industry of California from speedy destruction,
was a good thing and a bad thing. It was a blessing since it
started all over the world the long chain of experimental work
which after many failures and much expenditure of money is
gradually becoming understood and systematized. It was bad
only because it aroused many false hopes. In fact, it is safe to say
that progress in the battle against injurious insects on the western
coast of the United States was set back for ten years or more on
account of the supreme reliance on this method of fighting pests
and the consequent abandoning of every other means and every
other line o£ research.

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

The story of the successes and the failures in experimental
work of this kind is very long. I have told it in my "History of
Applied Entomology" ^ and in "The Insect Menace," ^ so that
it is not necessary to go into details here. Some startling, dramatic
things have been done. The great sugar-cane industry of Hawaii
has undoubtedly been saved by this method. The copra industry
in Fiji (their principal industry) has also been saved by the in-
troduction of parasites. The silk industry of Italy has profited
enormously by the introduction and establishment of parasites of
the white mulberry scale. These parasites were brought from
the United States. Now the news has just come that the im-
•portation of a little parasite {Coccophagus Gurneyi) from
Australia by Mr. Harold Compere under the direction of Harry
Scott Smith, has again saved the citrus industry of California
from approaching destruction, this time by the Citrophilus mealy-
bug, or at least this introduction has relieved the growers from
a tremendous burden.

It may very pertinently be asked, what had I to do with all
this } The honest reply is, "Not very much," but I have been con-
stantly writing on the subject and supporting and encouraging
efforts of this kind and at the same time have fathered much
of what has been done under the direct auspices of the Bureau
of Entomology. It is true that some of the greatest successes
have been made in other parts of the world, and that successes in
this kind of work are much more easily reached in small and
rather peculiarly situated countries, and especially in islands,
where the climate is equable and where the native fauna and flora
are simple. This does not hold for a vast continental area like
the United States, and, consequently, although we have done

* Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 84. Washington, Nov. 31, 1930.
•Century Company, New York, 1931.

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

much that counts over here, our work has not been especially
spectacular in its results.

I have always contended, however, that it would be an excellent
thing to do if we could bring into the United States from all
of the parallel life zones of the world as many parasitic and
predaceous insects as can possibly be acclimatized. And I have
been furthering this as far as possible.

There has, in fact, grown up in the Bureau at Washington a
very considerable force of trained young men who are devoting
themselves almost wholly to such work, and we have had travel-
ling experts in many of the European countries and in Japan,
China, South America, and India as well, studying the parasites
of a number of the insect pests of foreign origin that have estab-
lished themselves in the United States, such as the Gipsy Moth,
the Brown-tail Moth, the Alfalfa Weevil, the Japanese Beetle,
the European Corn-borer, the European Elm Leaf-beetle, the
European Earwig and others.

Many of my most interesting experiences have been con-
nected with efforts to establish relations with different European
countries to bring about a steady introduction into the United
States of the European parasites of the Gipsy Moth and the
Brown-tail Moth. As early as 1905 I went over, at the expense of
the state of Massachusetts; and in 1906, and almost annually
thereafter until the outbreak of the World War, Congress ap-
propriated funds so that I was able to do the work at the expense
of the Federal Government. I had visited Europe before at gov-
ernmental expense, although for a different object, and had
made personal friends among certain of the European workers.
The quick response that I received from the scientific men over
there to my request for advice and help was inspiring. From the
very start, learned and important officials like Marchal in Paris,
Berlese and Silvestri in Italy, Porchinski and Mokrzecki in

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

Russia, Heller in Germany, F. Rebel in Austria, and Joseph Jab-
lonowski in Hungary, advised me and helped me no end, and,
largely on their advice, I established in several countries a
regular service through which for years parasitized Gipsy Moths
and Brown-tail Moths in their early stages were sent to Massa-
chusetts,

As a matter of fact, before starting on this work, I knew more
about the parasites that had been recorded in Europe as attacking
both the Gipsy Moth and the Brown-tail Moth than any of my
European colleagues. That, of course, was because for twenty
years or more I had been hard at work cataloguing the European
publications. Nevertheless, each man of those I have mentioned
knew pretty well the principal enemies of these destructive pests
as they occurred in his own country, and some of them were able
at once to put me in touch with collectors who began immediately
to help us out.

For example, the people at the great Museum in Vienna told
me about a young man named Fritz Wagner. I looked Fritz up,
and went out on an expedition with him. We found in one of the
Vienna suburbs some street shade trees (I think they were what
we call locusts — Robinia pseudacacia — in the United States) that
had been partially defoliated by the Gipsy Moth, and on the
bark of these trees there were many little white cocoons of an
efficient and important parasite. Then we went on out to the
famous Napoleonic battlefield of Wagram, and there we found
some poplar trees whose trunks were fairly speckled with these
white cocoons. So Fritz Wagner knew what we wanted, and
for some years sent to Boston large numbers of boxes full of these
parasite cocoons and of Gipsy Moth caterpillars that had been
stung.

After this I went on to Budapest. The people at the Hungarian
National Museum took a courteous interest in my mission, but

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

oilered no definite help. I inquired about a correspondent,
Josef Jablonowski, and was answered that he was not a scientific
man, but a kind of farmer who taught in the Viticultural Institute
over in old Pesth. At that time (this was in 1905) such an attitude
on the part of the Museum workers did not shock me, as applied
entomology was hardly recognized as very scientific by the
museum and university people. Fortunately we have gone away
beyond this, and Jablonowski, at the time of his retirement in
1928, was a recognized scientific force in Hungary, as well as
all around the world.

In spite of this discouraging comment, I crossed the Danube
and rejoiced in my soul at the first sight of Jablonowski's beam-
ing and welcoming face. He was then a man of perhaps forty-
five years of age. He was able to give me an important point at
once. He showed me a dry-goods box with a wire gauze cover,
and in the box were some of the previous winter's nests of the
Brown-tail Moth. He told me that in the spring he had seen
minute winged parasites on the underside of the gauze cover,
and this of course meant to him and to me that there are parasites
in these over-wintering silken nests, and that we had only to
collect these nests in large numbers and ship them to the United
States.

But there was always the possibility that these minute creatures
were not parasites of the Brown-tail Moth, but that they had
simply crawled into the nests for protection during the winter.
Jablonowski and I could not understand each other perfectly
at that time, since his French was not of the best and mine was
even poorer, but I gathered that he was emphatically of the
opinion that the little creatures he had seen were true parasites of
the Brown-tail.

At all events, I was prepared to take the risk, and as a result
during the following winter many thousands of these silken nests

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

were received in Massachusetts, coming from Transylvania, from
the Hartz Mountains, from Switzerland, and Northwest France.
I feel reasonably convinced that the practical disappearance of the
Brown-tail Moth as a pest in New England is due, partly at least,
to my first interview with this charming and enlightened man,
who was at that time at least thought by his contemporaries
in the Museum in Budapest to be "not a scientific man, but rather
of the farmer class."

Those years of annual visits to Europe were full of interest and
of unusual episodes. I remember very well that in 1905 (the
year when Paul Marchal was president of the Entomological
Society of France) I addressed the Society in Paris on the gen-
eral subject of our need of these European parasites in the States.
What I said was published in the Journal of the Society, and this
met the eye of Rene Oberthiir of Rennes. As this splendid man
told me afterwards, he feared that the members of the Society
would not be able to do anything for me, and so he at once
offered me his services. He and his brother Charles were the
heads of the great Imprimerie Oberthiir of Paris and Rennes,
which for years did much of the printing for the French govern-
ment. During the winter, in the vicinity of Rennes, he had no
less than ten thousand nests of the Brown-tail collected and sent
to the United States. He did this entirely as an act of courtesy,
and would accept no compensation. The following year one of
Marchal's assistants (Andre Vuillet) was employed by us, and
stationed at the Oberthiirs in Rennes, where he studied parasites
and sent over large shipments. Vuillet was killed in the first year
of the World War, but his widow took up his work, and was
one of Marchal's laboratory assistants, for some years, when she
married again. She is now living in Algeria.

Still, through Rene Oberthiir, the work was continued in the
South of France. I took up one of his collectors, Harold Powell,

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

for a time, and later secured another man, M. Dillon, who largely
used soldiers on leave to collect caterpillars that had probably
been parasitized.

In some of the out-of-the-way places in the Department of the
Bouches-du-Rhone, the peasants became greatly interested in this
work, and wondered why we were doing it. A very old peasant
explained it on the ground that it is a well-known fact that every
millionth caterpillar has a diamond in its head, and that this was
a somewhat laborious American way of accumulating a fortune.

It was on my first visit to the Midi on this mission that I had
an unusual experience. I called on Dr. Siepi, at that time Head-
keeper of the Marseilles Zoological Gardens, and I found visiting
him no less a person than Mistral, the famous Provencal poet.
Siepi promised to collect for me predatory beetles that destroyed
the Gipsy Moth caterpillars, and Mistral showed much interest
in the plan. He asked me if I knew his friend, J. Henri Fabre, at
Serignan, and offered to introduce me to Fabre if I would go
down to Aries with him the next day. I did so, and thus first
met the "insect Homer" through the courtesy of the great poet.

About four years after Fabre's death, I visited Serignan, in
company with Dr. Marchal and M. P. Vayssiere, and wrote an
account of the visit which was published under the title of "A
Pilgrimage to the Home of Henri Fabre."

During those early years much of the search in Europe for
these particular parasites was done in France, and we owe much
to the encouragement and assistance given to us by the French
experts. There are many interesting incidents connected with our
French experiences.

Along about 1909 it became obvious that nursery stock which
was being received in several parts of the United States direct
from France carried the eggs of the Gipsy Moth and nests
of the Brown-tail Moth directly into hitherto uninfested parts of

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

our country, and this was used by us as one o£ the arguments in
favor of the passage of a plant quarantine law.

In that year, therefore, I visited the great nursery-growing
regions in France, and found that it was a season of unusual
abundance of both these insects. The road-side oaks and hedges
in Brittany and Normandy were defoliated by the Gipsy Moth,
and the fruit trees and forest trees carried many nests of the
Brown-tail. In fact, caterpillars of many kinds were unusually
abundant. It is worthy of mention that a year later, 1910, exactly
the opposite conditions were found : caterpillars of all kinds were
scarce, no Gipsy Moth caterpillars were found, and very few
Brown-tail.

In the course of my 1910 trip I hunted up M. G. Fermaud, the
agent of the Franco-American Seedling Company of Geneva,
New York and Angers. I had met him the previous year, and
had found to my surprise that he had hved long in America and
had married an American girl as his first wife, so that his
children by this wife, then nearly grown, were practically Ameri-
can. As agent for his company, M. Fermaud was growing nursery
stock in many different small lots in the country around Angers.
In order to show the clean condition of the stock in the field, he
took me to one place after another where farmers or agents were
growing young apples and other fruit stock for subsequent ship-
ment by his company to America.

At one place in the suburbs of the city of Angers we stopped
at a gate in a high stone wall, which reached nearly to the tops
of the small stone buildings within and near by, and he said to
me, "Here is one of the men who is growing stock for me, and
who, by the way, is one of the most successful flower growers
in France, making a specialty, perhaps, of roses." We entered,
and found ourselves in a perfect paradise of flowers. Row after
row of magnificent rose-bushes of different varieties, many of

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

them in blossom, and bed after bed of annual plants, producing
such a mass of color as I had never seen before except in Holland
during the tulip season, and in the Great Basin of California in
the blossoming time of sweet-peas and nasturtiums.

Inquiry of a laborer led us down into a part of the garden
where we found the owner, who was introduced to me as M.
Theophile Gautier, I was dumb for a moment with the recollec-
tion of the brilliant author of "Le Capitaine Fracasse" and of
"Mile. Maupin," for here in front of me was apparently a horny-
handed peasant in rough corduroy trousers, belted, with sabots on
his feet, and a weather-beaten countenance and straggly brown
beard, but with eyes of keen intelligence. He greeted me cordially
and showed us about his place. We examined his stock and found
it clean and free from insects and diseases. I took his photograph,
standing in his field, and promised to send him a copy. He told
me that he was the originator of several new varieties of roses.
One of these he had named after the Czar of Russia, a fact
which had brought him a letter of thanks from his Imperial
Majesty. He cherished this document highly.

We were pressed for time, so we soon left M. Gautier, marvel-
ling at his skill as a horticulturist, and the fact that a man of his
standing, and apparently so prosperous, should retain his peasant
costume and his little stone house and his extremely simple style
of life.

On my return to America, I sent a copy of the photograph of
Gautier to M. Fermaud, but heard nothing further about it. Two
years later, in the summer of 1912, I again visited Angers, and,
in company with M. Fermaud's eldest son, once more visited
some of the stock plots of the Franco-American Seedling Com-
pany. I suggested to young Fermaud that we look up Gautier,
and so we did. He recognized me at once as the man who took
his photograph, and called his wife and introduced me. He

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

sent a messenger down the street after his two sons, and im-
mediately began picking flowers to give me. I told him that I
did not know what I should do with them, but he cut an
immense armful and carried it out and put it in our automobile.
He urged me to come into the little stone cottage and have a
glass of wine with him. Then he insisted on my taking a photo-
graph of the whole family, including his wife and his two sons.
Mme. Gautier was in her working clothes and protested, but
was overruled. Two big, manly, fine-looking sons came hurriedly
in, and two or three neighbors, including the butcher next door,
joined the group. We all had some more wine, and Gautier
showed me a diploma of Officier de I'Ordre de Merite Agricole
that had been given him by the President of France since my
last visit. I knew how highly the decoration of Chevalier of
this Order is prized by some of my colleagues in America,
and to find this apparently simple peasant with such a decora-
tion was a surprise. I photographed the group, took some shares
in a raffle for a bicycle for the benefit of a church to which one
of the sons belonged, refused to take shares in a raffle for another
church in which the butcher was interested, and left with hearty
handshakes all round.

Fermaud told me that an injurious insect was never allowed
to live on Gautier's place, and that his skill with flowers was
almost uncanny. His decoration by the government was highly
deserved.

This episode proved to me again what I had already believed:
that French democracy is even more intense than our own. And
it also seems to indicate that the giving of decorations, when
properly done, as it appears to be in France, is something that
we really miss, and perhaps need, in the United States.

The coincidence of the name with that of the famous poet
and novelist seems to be simply a coincidence, as this modern

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

Theophile Gautier was not aware o£ any relationship. The car-
load of flowers, by the way, was carried to the Convent of
Sacre-Coeur in Angers, and given to the Mother Superior for a
novice who was the daughter of one of my colleagues in the
United States Department of Agriculture.

To go back to the parasite importations. After I had engaged
Fritz Wagner in Vienna, and E. Schlopfer in Dresden (the latter
on the advice of Dr. Heller), I went to Switzerland and looked
up Dr. Herbert Haviland Field, the Director of the Concilium
Bibliographicum Zoologicum, who at once introduced me to one
of his principal helpers, Fraulein Marie Riihl, who was a com-
petent entomologist, and through whose services the United
States surely profited greatly. Her father had started a small but
well-known journal, called Nature Novitates, which she had
carried on after his death. She therefore knew by correspondence
very many collectors, especially in Switzerland, Germany and
Austria, and for a number of years was able to assemble thou-
sands of parasitized Gipsy Moth larv2 and Brown-tail nests
in Zurich, where she packed them uniformly and sent them on
to Massachusetts.

Miss Riihl carried on this work successfully until the outbreak
of the Great War. I saw her in Zurich in 1925. She was still
working for the Concilium, which, after Dr. Field's death, had
been taken over by the Swiss government with the financial aid of
many foreign organizations. I learn that since then Miss Riihl
has died. She was a fine woman and a useful one. She will always
be remembered by the force in Washington.

But this was by no means all we did in Europe before the
war in this particular investigation. As early as 1907 I went out
into Russia. I had corresponded with Professor N. Porchinsky
of the Ministry of Agriculture at St. Petersburg, and he had

[lOl]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

written to several experts in Little Russia and Bessarabia, telling
them of my coming and my purpose. So in the early spring of
that year I took the Oriental Express from Paris down to Buda-
pest, picked up my former courier, Alexander Pichler, a capital
fellow who for years was one of the leading couriers of South-
eastern Europe, and started to the northeast for Kiew. We broke
the journey at Lemberg, in Galician Poland, a place later to
become famous in the great World War. The country from
Budapest to Lemberg seemed one gigantic wheat-field. Previous
to leaving Budapest, I had met in the lobby of the Hotel Hun-
garia a number of men connected with great grain firms in
Liverpool, who had come down in the spring to look into the
prospects of the wheat crop for that year, and who told me that
it was an annual journey for them. Eventually reaching Kiew,
I met by appointment Professor Waldemar Pospelow of the
University there, a slender, handsome, blond-bearded young Rus-
sian of high scientific attainment, and with him talked over the
question of the Russian parasites of the Gipsy Moth. He recom-
mended to me the desirability of renting a garden in the suburbs
of Kiew, and conducting there through the summer a large
number of rearing experiments with the parasites of both the
Gipsy Moth and the Brown-tail Moth, and to make at the same
time some biological studies concerning them. I fell in with this
plan very readily. This was the first bit of work of this precise
kind that was done for us in a foreign country. One of Pos-
pelow's graduate students was engaged for the season (I have
forgotten his name). The garden had already been selected, and
I advanced money to Pospelow to complete the contract and to
pay the rent for the first two months. It was a large garden filled
with fruit trees — in fact, it was an orchard rather than a garden —
and probably covered two or more acres. The rental price was
fifteen dollars a month.

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After a day in Kiew, a beautiful place on the banks of the
Dnieper (then in flood), and with an extraordinarily beautiful
cathedral, we took train for Odessa, and from there made a trip
to Kischiniew, where a similar station was established under
the charge of Professor Isaak Krassiltschik.

Returning to Odessa, we took boat for Sebastopol, where I
found letters from Professor Sigismund Mokrzecki of Simfero-
pol, a well-known economic entomologist, asking me to meet
him at Bachtisserai, halfway between Sebastopol and Simfero-
pol, in the heart of the agricultural region of the Crimea. As
it happened, dear old Pichler, the courier, had developed an
enormous carbuncle between his shoulders, which completely
incapacitated him. So, leaving him in the hands of a surgeon,
I started with the hotel porter, who spoke German, on the
morning train to Bachtisserai. On the station platform there I
met Mokrzecki, accompanied by the Chief of Police and his
bulldog, and by a General Miiller, who had come with him from
Simferopol as interpreter, since he had spoken English since his
boyhood days passed in an English school. The porter from
Sebastopol took the train back to that city, and the three of us
proceeded to an enormous farm owned by a count whose name
I have forgotten, where we were met by the manager, a most
intelligent man by the name of Andrieff. Neither Andrieff nor
Mokrzechi was content to wait until their Russian was trans-
lated into English by General Miiller, so, since Mokrzecki knew
a little German, and Andriefl rather more French, the conversa-
tion was mostly carried on in those two languages, except when
General Miiller insisted on talking to me on his own account.

We spent the next two hours walking through the enormous
apple orchards of the estate, which were at that time in full
bloom (it must have been about the sixth of May). Never have
I seen finer trees or more healthy ones. At the recommendation

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of Mokrzecki the manager had purchased American spraying
machinery and had built a fumigating house for all nursery stock.
The orchard seemed singularly free from insect pests, with the
sole exception of the apple weevil, which, although quite abun-
dant, apparently had done little damage.

After two hours' walk in a hot sun we went to the mansion-
like farmhouse, and were introduced to Mme. Andrieff and |
her children. She had made ready a wonderful luncheon, at which
all sorts of dishes of which I was ignorant were served. A great
loaf of Passover bread was on the table, and many other kinds
of bread, stuffed with meat and with fish. Many bottles of
champagne were opened, and Andrieff made an enthusiastic and
altogether too complimentary speech in French.

All of us then went to the village of Bachtisserai, and spent
the rest of the daylight hours going through the old Palace of
the Khan of the Crimea, a wonderfully beautiful structure, al-
though somewhat dilapidated. It had been the purpose of the
Czar to maintain this as an historical museum of the Tatar
regime in that part of Russia, but the plan had been stopped
for the time by the financial embarrassment caused by the Russo-
Japanese war. There was only one caretaker, and everything was
covered with dust. The famous Countess Potocka was at one
time imprisoned in the place, and there is a fountain in the palace
known as Les larmes de Potocka. The palace is built of wood,
but it is very beautiful and wonderfully effective. It was used
at one time as a winter resort by Catherine the Great. Delight-
ful and picturesque as this place is, it seems rarely to have
been visited by tourists.

At nightfall we boarded the train again, and arrived before
bedtime at Simferopol. The following day we spent at the
Mokrzecki museum, a very good regional museum which
Mokrzecki had built up by his own efforts, and which was

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

devoted to the fauna and flora of the Crimea, spreading out
a bit into the general fauna of the Black Sea region. The col-
lection of insects had a much wider range, and included a great
deal of material from other countries.

As had been the case with other European official entomolo-
gists, Mokrzecki entered at once into my plans for the intro-
duction of parasites of the Gipsy Moth into the United States,
and would not hear of any remuneration from the state of Mas-
sachusetts or from the United States government. He had al-
ready reared an egg parasite of the Brown-tail Moth and was
subsequently of much help to us.

In anticipation of my arrival, Mokrzecki had prepared an
elaborate address of welcome, illuminated by a clever artist in
the museum and beautifully bound in Russian leather. I was
amused to read in gold letters on the cover the words "Sir
Leland Howard," which indicated that someone had confused
American customs with Enghsh ones. Mokrzecki lived very
comfortably and had a beautiful wife, as well as a young son and
daughter.

There was an incident connected with my departure which
could hardly have happened in any other country at that period.
About five o'clock in the afternoon we all went to the train, a
party of perhaps eight or ten, including Mokrzecki's family, the
Chief of Police, a prominent advocate. General Miiller and Mok-
rzecki's assistants. We all stood on the station platform for per-
haps a half-hour, awaiting the train and talking together in an
animated way. Next morning at Sebastopol I received a telegram
from the Chief of Police at Simferopol, warning me that a
suspect had been seen to enter the carriage next to mine on the
train. He was described as a short, robust man of the working
class, with a strong mark on his forehead. The Chief apologized
for the warning and said that my Simferopol friends were

[■05]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

anxious about me, and that perhaps I did not know they were
living in troublous times. I never saw the suspect, but I learned
later that the week before my arrival a bomb had been thrown
by some anarchist into the Police Station.

The next day or so, while we were waiting for the Black Sea
boat for Constantinople, we spent in Sebastopol and the sur-
rounding country. There was an interesting Marine Biological
Station, not so elaborate as the one at Naples, nor so extensive
as that at Roscoff, but well equipped and in the charge of a
very intelligent zoologist. I was especially impressed by the
library of periodicals, which seemed to contain about everything
worth while. It may be interesting to state that a few years after
my visit Dr. Paul Galtsoff became the director of this station.
He later escaped when the Red Army overwhelmed the Crimea
and is now holding an important position in the Bureau of
Fisheries at Washington.

While I was seated at luncheon on one of these days (Pichler
was still in bed with his carbuncle) a card was brought to my
table, and I asked the waiter to show my visitor in. A large,
handsome, bearded gentleman entered with a large volume in
his hands and introduced himself in fairly good English as Mr.
Constantinoff. He explained that he was the Manager of the
Black Sea Line of steamers, and that he had come on behalf of
the Mayor of the city, Mr. Maximoflf, who was detained by
official duties, but who greatly desired to have me see his country
place and his large vineyards. Mr. Constantinoff had been selected
by him as the only man of his acquaintance who knew English
(the large volume was a dictionary of Russian-English and was
intended to facilitate conversation). I accepted the invitation
and we drove out to a beautiful hilly estate beyond Balaklava,
where the manager of the estate was introduced, and where we
spent the rest of the afternoon in the vineyard or on the grounds

[io6]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

or in the wine cellars. The estate was large, and the Mayor must
have been a very wealthy man. His vineyards were in excellent
condition, with no evidence of Phylloxera or, in fact, of any in-
jurious insects. The buildings were all of a glaring white,
modern, very handsome, with good architectural lines, but
strangely ornamented by a series of patterns, the unit of which
was a round black spot, a little more than two inches in diameter.
ConstantinofI told me that these spots were the butts of cham-
pagne bottles that had been picked up on the ground when the
estate was bought. He accounted for their presence by the fact
that the French troops, during the Crimean War, were encamped
on that part of the Peninsula. The bottles had been set in cement
and formed a very artistic ornamentation to the building.

In a spare hour I was unwise enough to visit the War Museum,
which was connected with a great panorama of the Crimean
War. I got from this museum the best idea that I had ever had
of the horrors of war, and it caused me many a nightmare
later.

It is a wonder to me that so few tourists have visited that
garden spot of the Crimean Peninsula. The scenery of the rocky
place on the coast known as lalta is of the most beautiful and
impressive character. The old palace at Bachtisserai was one of
the greatest curiosities of Europe. The climate of the whole Pen-
insula was delightful, the hotels were good, and the people
were hospitable. The descendants of the old Tatars were still
living there in numbers.

But I must not leave Mokrzecki with this brief mention. Great
trouble was to come to him, as well as to my other Russian
scientific friends. After the Second Revolution and the overthrow
of the Kerensky Government, the Red Armies spread through
Little Russia and invaded the Crimea. As is well known, thou-
sands upon thousands of people fled before them into Sebastopol

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

and boarded vessels of many nations anchored in the harbor.
It must have been a scene o£ frightful confusion. Mokrzecki and
his daughter managed to reach a vessel that carried them to
Constantinople. His wife and son probably boarded some other
vessel. At all events, they were separated and, so far as I know,
they have never come together again. Eventually Mokrzecki
and his daughter reached Belgrade, where for a time he taught
in a local institution. I have since met one of his laboratory
assistants there, Madame Anna Bragina, a most intelligent
woman, who had studied in Jugoslavia the parasites and the
ecology of several imported pests, and who, since the war, has
been of much assistance to the experts of the United States
Bureau of Entomology. Later, Mokrzecki and his daughter went
on to Poland. He is now in charge of the entomology at the
important agricultural college at Skierniewice, where I visited
him in 1927. The little girl whom I had known in the Crimea
twenty years before had grown into a beautiful woman and
was married, but she and her husband lived with her father,
who then held, and still holds, a high place in the esteem of the
agricultural ministry of Poland.

Many stories could be told concerning the work I did in
Europe between 1902 and 1912, relating to this parasite intro-
duction. A number of countries were visited, and I had some
amusing adventures. Excellent services were started in a number
of countries, and hundreds of thousands of parasitized cater-
pillars were sent to the United States. The most perfect arrange-
ments were made with the European shipping authorities, and
the late United States despatch agent of New York, Mr. I. P.
Roosa, took the keenest interest in the work and helped us in
many ways. I should say a special word for the American Ex-
press Company. The agents of this organization at Paris, Mar-
seilles and Havre, at Hamburg and at Naples, may have re-

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

ceived instructions from headquarters, but they helped the gov-
ernment very inteUigently and very greatly. An expert of the
Bureau, Mr. J. N. Summers, was caught in Germany at the
beginning of the World War and got home with difficulty.
The war, naturally, stopped all of the importing work. But of
late years it has been resumed to some extent, and skilled experts
of the Bureau have been maintained in Eastern Europe, to rear
and send over promising parasites that we had not received in
sufficient quantity before the war. For some years a laboratory
for this purpose was maintained by our government in Budapest,
and such work has also been done in Poland, Czechoslovakia
and Jugoslavia.

While nothing spectacular has been accomplished by this intro-
duction of the parasites of the Gipsy Moth and the Brown-tail
Moth, there is absolutely no doubt that the introduced parasites
have aided very greatly indeed in our fight against these pests.

I tried to get into the World War, although far past the age for
active service. I felt sure that I could do something as a liaison
officer, because of my knowledge of the French language and
my personal acquaintance with many leaders among the French
scientific men.

After the war there was one of these parasite introductions of
a reversed kind, that is, from America to Europe, instead of from
Europe to America, in which I played a small but direct part.
There is, native to the United States, a plant-louse that lives
upon the roots of apple and pear. It is a little bluish creature
covered with white stringy wax that gives it a woolly appearance.
It is known over here as the Woolly Root-louse of the apple
{Schizoneura or Erisoma lanigera) . One hundred and fifty years
ago or more this insect was accidentally imported through com-
merce into England, and by like means it spread later to France

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

and many other portions of the world. It is known in other
countries as "The American Bhght." In most parts o£ America,
especially where the soil is light or rather sandy, this pest lives
principally upon roots; but in England and France, especially in
clayey soils, it multiplies enormously aboveground and seriously
drains the vitality of the trees.

When in the United States this insect appears aboveground
on suckers from the trunk, it is destroyed by many other insects,
but particularly by a very minute parasite known as Aphelinus
malt.

Dr. Paul Marchal had talked to me about the advisability of
importing this parasite into France, but soon after that the war
came on and all else was forgotten. When peace came, and re-
habilitation on a large scale began in France, Marchal's functions
were enlarged, and he was given more assistants, which enabled
him to establish several field laboratories. Then he was ready
to attempt the introduction of the Aphelinus. We were only too
glad to have a chance to help him, for we owed him much. So
in the spring of 1920 I had men in several different parts of
the United States gather twigs of apple and pear, the twigs
selected being, for the most part, suckers bearing the dead and
swollen bodies of the plant-lice. Each of these swollen bodies
contained a dormant parasite. These twigs were carefully packed
in small boxes, and the boxes themselves were made into a
packet a foot or so square. In late May I started out with this
packet in my luggage. While at Washington it had been kept
at a temperature of about forty degrees F. Arriving in New
York, I boarded the boat and at once consulted the Chief
Steward, By his orders, the man in charge of the meats placed the
packet upon a shelf in his refrigerating room, the temperature
of which I was assured ran from 37° to 41° F. Each day of the
journey the temperature of this room was reported to me, and

[no]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

at no time did it exceed 39°. (Previous work had shown that
the insects became active only at 42° F.) I arrived in London late
at night. The weather was cold, and I placed the packet on the
window ledge outside my room. Early next morning I looked
up a fishmonger and got him to put the packet in his cold room,
since for two or three days I had to attend the important trien-
nial meeting of the Imperial Bureau of Entomology.

Then one morning I took it out, boarded the boat train,
reached Paris at four o'clock in the afternoon, and was met at
the Gare du Nord by Dr. Marchal. We hastened across Paris
in a taxi to his laboratory in the Rue Claude Bernard, where a
pear tree, well covered with the Woolly Aphis, stood in a large
pot covered with gauze. The surface of the ground in the pot
in which the gauze-covered tree had been planted was covered
by white paper.

Now was the interesting moment. The laboratory assistants
gathered around. The gauze was removed. The boxes were
opened one by one, and their contents were dumped on the
white paper. To our great chagrin we saw at once that many
(possibly all) of the little black parasites had already issued
and died. Their minute black corpses showed plainly on the
white paper. It was a great disappointment, but we placed the
gauze over the tree again and left it.

The next day Marchal and I started on a long journey to visit
his laboratories in the south of France. We went by train to
Lyons, and thence by boat to Avignon. There we were met by a
government automobile driven by a soldier and were carried off
to Aries, where we were joined by P. Vayssiere, with whom we
went south to the Gulf of Fos, incidentally visiting several places
to see the work against the Moroccan locust. We stopped, by
the way, at J. H. Fabre's old place at Serignan, and at Orange,
where we called on Vayssiere's charming old grandmother, then

[in]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

proceeded to Montpellier, where we spent a day with Picard.
And it was here that we had the first encouraging news from
Paris. Marchal received a telegram stating that ten Uving
Aphehnus had emerged from the odds and ends on the paper
under the pear tree!

We then went on to Marseilles, and later to Menton, to see the
Insectarium then existing there under the charge of Poutiers.
There we had more good news. Another telegram came from
Paris. Two hundred more of the Aphelinus had emerged.

A few days later I went down into Italy, and when I found
myself in Paris again, late in August, the grandchildren and
great-grandchildren of the survivors of the parasites I had
brought over were existing in Marchal's experimental garden
literally by millions.

Thus, apparently, there had been added to the French fauna
a new element that promised to be of great use. But the question
as to whether it would pass the winter successfully was still un-
answered. It did. And from that beginning it has been sent
from one country to another, establishing itself successfully in
practically all of the more southern countries, where it has
helped greatly to settle one of the serious problems of the fruit-
growers. In the more northern countries it has not done as well.
I am told that in England it has not proved of great value.
Recent reports, however, show that in certain of the Balkan
countries it is doing very well.

But this is not all. A South African student, Mr. A. E.
Lundie, studying at Cornell University a year or so later, sent
woolly root-lice parasitized by this Aphelinus to South Africa,
and in certain places in the Union it is said to thrive. Moreover,
after my return to the United States I sent the species in num-
ber to Uruguay, and from there it was sent to other South
American countries. The reports concerning its work are enthusi-

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

astic, and it is said to have done away with the pest. Again we
sent from Washington boxes of the parasite collected in different
parts of the United States to Dr. R. J. Tillyard at Nelson, New
Zealand, where they were cared for and liberated with enormous
success. Tillyard sent specimens to L. J. Newman in Australia
(at Perth), who also reports enthusiastically. The first sendings
to Japan have failed to take hold, but other experiments are on
the way.

Thus Aphelinus malt has shown itself to be a potentially
cosmopolitan species. And it is a great joy to realize that I had
something to do with its spread.

This general subject of natural control is an attractive one.
There have been many failures and much unnecessary waste of
money, but the great successes have far more than compensated
for this expense. And, judging from present reports, there is no
doubt that work of this kind will be carried on for a long time
to come. Many men whose names might be mentioned have
taken prominent part in this work. It seems to me, however, that
we should remember especially C. V. Riley, Albert Koebele,
Frederick Muir, and W. F. Fiske among the earlier ones. It is
true that George Compere was an indefatigable worker along
this line, but Compere was not a trained entomologist, and in
spite of his admirable persistence, coupled with his great enthusi-
asm, his labors as a whole did not add greatly to our knowledge.

Although Albert Koebele was a great friend of mine, the
published mentions of this admirable man have, I think, been
over-enthusiastic. As I have stated previously, I am convinced
that an expression that has crept into the German entomological
literature — "the Koebele method" — as applied to natural control
is a mistake. Koebele was a keen-eyed collector and a sur-
passingly good preparator, but he was not a scholarly man. He

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

had had almost no education and he was not a broad ento-
mologist.

While W. F. Fiske's work in a quite different region did not
bring about the spectacular results that came from Koebele's
sending of the Australian Ladybird to California, he was a well-
trained and extremely thoughtful and ingenious man. His work
at the receiving end of the sendings of the parasites of the Gipsy
Moth and the Brown-tail Moth from abroad, as displayed in the
large volume published as Bulletin 91 of the Bureau of En-
tomology, has given him a distinctive rank and a very high one
among the early workers. And then his subsequent work as an
explorer added greatly to his standing.

In a book that I wrote rather recently and that was published
in 1931 by the Century Company under the title, "The Insect
Menace," I told at some length two of the most striking stories
connected with parasite introduction. One was of the late
Frederick Muir and his extraordinary and successful efforts in
the face of great obstacles to find and to import into Hawaii
the parasites of the Sugar Cane Beetle Borer. The other was of
Fiske's remarkable achievement in the finding of a certain Gipsy
Moth parasite in the forests of Gioatauro, in Sicily, and of his
persistence and great ingenuity in securing quantities of this
parasite and getting it sent successfully to America. I wish that
I could retell these stories here. But I must not do so. They can
be looked up easily.

In 1896 I published a bulletin entitled, "A Study in Insect
Parasitism." I am glad that I did so, not so much because it
was a good bulletin, but because it attracted Fiske's attention
and turned him toward this line of work. Unfortunately, he left
the service about 1912. He was then commissioned by the English
to take up a study of the Sleeping Sickness, and for a time con-

["4]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

ducted an admirably equipped camp laboratory on an island in
Victoria Nyanza. When the World War came on, he turned his
attention to military service for the British, and since the war
I have lost track of him. He was an exceptionally ingenious man
and did great work.

["5]

chapter Yl

W

E ARE fond of saying that circumstances have conspired
to bring about such-and-such a result, and surely a series of
different things led me naturally to take a great interest in the
subject of the insect carriers of disease. There were plenty of
mosquitoes at Ithaca, and long before I read Reaumur's fascinat-
ing account of the development of the common rain-water mos-
quito at Paris in the middle of the i8th century, someone had
told me that the little wrigglers in buckets of rainwater and in
horse troughs were young mosquitoes. I had not only studied
their transformations out of mere curiosity, but I had found that
in this aquatic stage they were readily killed by pouring a few
drops of kerosene on the surface of the water. But of course I
was only a boy, and mentioned it only to my boy friends.

When I came to Washington I developed a slight case of
malaria. I consulted a physician, who told me that it was due
to my open windows at night — that the miasma came in from
the Potomac flats. I shut the windows, took quinine, and got
well. But I never had the slightest suspicion that there was any
such thing as an Anopheles mosquito. Mosquitoes were bad
in most places in those days. The New Jersey coast one was at
the height of its reputation, and I remember that it was almost

[ii6]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

impossible, in many parts of the Northern States, to sit out of
doors at or after dusk from late May until September. In Ithaca,
where I spent my boyhood, the low-lying part of the city which
we called The Flat was very malarious. "Chills and fever" were
common, and extended up the West Hill for some little distance.
The East Hill, on the summit of which the University was built,
and which was gradually covered with private houses, was not
malarious. As I look back, I can remember that the presence or
absence of malaria in the different parts of the town could
plainly be seen by the appearance of the houses and dooryards —
well-painted and well-kept on the East Hill, a little more slovenly
in The Flat.

From time to time we received letters in Washington asking
information about mosquitoes, and I published a number of notes
in Insect Life. In 1892 I built a little house in the Onteora Club,
in the Catskill Mountains, and in the summer found mosquitoes
very prevalent. On my land there was a surface pool of water
covering about sixteen square feet, and, remembering my boy-
hood experience in Ithaca, I poured kerosene on it, making a
complete surface film. This not only killed the mosquito larvje,
but also the female mosquitoes which alighted on the water to lay
their eggs. I read an article about this before the Buffalo Meeting
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
and the newspapers took it up. The article itself was later
published in Insect Life.

When I became Chief of the Service in 1894, it occurred to
me that it might be a good idea to write a long and compre-
hensive bulletin on the subject of household insects, and this I
did in collaboration with my assistants, C. L. Marlatt and F. H.
Chittenden, each of us signing the portion which he contributed.
Mosquitoes, the housefly, and certain other insects fell to my
lot, and before writing I studied their biology rather carefully.

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

Apparently no one had studied the development of the com-
monest of the rainwater mosquitoes since Reaumur had written
in Paris one hundred and fifty years before, and of course I
found that in Washington things were rather different.

So I was getting more and more interested in mosquitoes,
and later worked out the life histories of several species. Among
these was Anopheles quadrimaculatus , afterwards shown to be
a malaria-carrier. Then came the announcement of Ross's dis-
covery. I was now ready to publish a bulletin on this subject,
but before I did it I sent an illustrated article on the life history
of a malarial mosquito to the Scientific American. It was pub-
lished and attracted much attention.

Almost coincident with Ross's discovery, the Italian school
of observers, led by Battista Grassi, had made similar announce-
ments. Dr. W. S. Thayer, of Johns Hopkins University, who had
been specializing on malaria, went to Rome to study the matter,
and on his return came over to Washington to talk with me
about malarial mosquitoes. He became interested in a campaign
of instruction on these new discoveries, in the State of Maryland,
and I remember lecturing with him at a Maryland town under
the auspices of the State Board of Health. I had already lectured
before the American Medical Association, before a Medical As-
sociation in Texas, and before other audiences in different parts
of the country on this general subject.

It resulted from all this that when Dr. Walter Reed, of the
U. S. Army, wanted to start a thorough investigation of
Yellow Fever in Cuba at the end of the Spanish-American War,
he came to my ofBce to make a study of certain mosquitoes
prevalent in Cuba, and especially of the one then known as
Culex fasciatus, which had been suggested by a Havana physi-
cian, Carlos Finley (son of a Spanish mother and an English
father), as the probable carrier of Yellow Fever. He brought

[ii8]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

with him Dr. Jesse W. Lazaer and later Dr. James Carroll,
who were associated with him in the famous Yellow Fever
Commission. Dr. Aristides Agramonte, a native Cuban, was
also a member. The work of the Reed Commission is well
known. During all their investigations. Reed constantly wrote
to me, not only on questions relating to the different species of
mosquitoes, but also to tell me of the progress of their work.

No end of fame has come to the Walter Reed Commission,
and the results of its work have done much to revolutionize
conditions in the Southern United States, Central and South
America and Africa. They have really opened up vast regions
for safe settlement by the white race. But since those days the
statement has been made publicly that Reed himself viewed his
results more from a scholastic or scientific point of view than
from the practical. This is distinctly not true, since in his corre-
spondence with me, after he considered that his demonstration
of the carriage of Yellow Fever by the mosquito was perfect,
Reed dilated on what it would mean to the world, and was
kind enough to say nice things about the anti-mosquito measures
that I had recommended.

In 1901 I wrote a book entitled "Mosquitoes, How They Live,
How They Are Classified, and How They May Be Destroyed." ^
Its publication in the summer of that year, following as it did
the announcement of the results gained by Ross and by the
Reed Commission, was most fortunate, for it was what is called
the "psychological moment." The Surgeon-General of the U. S.
Army, George E. Sternberg, saw that many copies were placed
in the hands of the members of the Army Medical Corps,
especially those stationed in tropical or sub-tropical regions. Its
recommendations formed the basis of the clean-up of Havana,
and for the early measures undertaken in the Panama Canal

^ McClure, Phillips & Co., New York.

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

Zone. A little later, as the Bishop of New Orleans told me, it
was a godsend to the people of that city when the epidemic of
1905 appeared.

But I was by no means satisfied with this book. The medical
discoveries had inspired work relating to mosquitoes and their
control all over the world. Andrew Carnegie had just founded
the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and I applied for a grant
to finance the preparation of an extensive monograph of the
mosquitoes of North and Central America and the West Indies.
After some delay a grant was made, amounting to two thousand
five hundred dollars a year for three years. In the course of
those three years the field opened up enormously. I found that
there were many more species of mosquitoes than I had sup-
posed, and that there were infinite variations in habit among
the different genera. I had employed expert agents living in
different life zones, and had associated with me Dr. H. G.
Dyar and Mr. Frederick Knab. We found that we could not
possibly produce such a work as we wished to bring out at the
expiration of the allotted time. But the Institution insisted upon
published results before continuing its appropriations. We were
therefore left without financial support. But I had secured the
help of many voluntary observers, and I also got Congress to
appropriate ten thousand dollars each year "for the investigation
of insects affecting the health of mankind and animals." Dr.
Dyar was fortunately a man of some wealth, and he financed
several expeditions to regions that had previously been unknown
to us. And so the work went on. Finally, in 1912, we were
able to present the manuscript of two volumes to the Carnegie
Institution, and in 1917 two more. The work as a whole was
received with much interest by the medical investigators, sani-
tarians and biological workers of the world.

Nineteen seventeen, however, was a long time ago. Knab,

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

bright little fellow, talented investigator and clever artist that
he was, died in 1918 from a disease contracted, curiously enough,
from the bite of an insect in Brazil years before. The mass of
descriptive work that had been done in different countries was
appalling. I applied to the Carnegie Institution for permission to
prepare for publication an entire revision of the monograph,
but finally, after a number of years, received a notification that
but one more volume could be issued, and that this was to be
entirely taxonomic in its character. This was not what I wanted,
but it was much better than nothing, and Dr. Dyar, who had
been keeping up his work all this time, prepared a large volume
revising the classification and including many new species, and
including also in its geographic scope the entire continent of
South America. This the Carnegie Institution published in excel-
lent shape under the title, "Mosquitoes of the Americas." This
appeared toward the close of 1929 under the sole authorship
of Dr. Dyar, who died soon after.

Harrison Gray Dyar was probably the best posted man on
the classification of mosquitoes of his time, with the possible
exception of F. W. Edwards, of the British Museum of Natural
History. It may be worth while to tell how Dyar became in-
terested in mosquitoes. He had graduated at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and had studied bacteriology at
Columbia University, New York, under T. Mitchell Prudden,
gaining his Doctorate in Philosophy by a thesis on the air of
New York City. He had always been interested in caterpillars,
and in his idle moments in the summers had worked out a
classification of these worms (larvse of lepidoptera) . In the
summer of 1902, he was, I think, down at Woods Hole, Massa-
chusetts, when he saw my book on mosquitoes, which had just
appeared. He was struck with the illustrations of the larvs of
Anopheles, and soon after found some of these in a horse trough.

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

Having studied dieir characteristic markings and structure, he
began such work on the larvae of mosquitoes. And thus began
his work with this group which lasted until the time of his
death. Dyar, by the way, was a very ingenious and original
fellow. While he gave due weight to the opinions of others,
these did not greatly influence his original thought. For example,
let us take his thesis on the bacteria in the air of New York
City. Having done some morphological work with insects, he
was impressed by the difficulty in characterizing bacteria, in
that they were morphologically so similar. This was at a time
when the specificity of these micro-organisms, especially as to
their causation of certain diseases, was being insisted upon by
the Koch school. But Dyar insisted on the possibility that certain
forms considered to be specific might not really be so, but that
in different environments they might alter both in character and
effect. It is interesting to note that bacteriology of late has been
turning in the direction of his views.

But in telling of the preparation of the Carnegie monograph
and of Dyar's much later volume and of Dyar himself we
have gone far ahead of the story.

When the little book on mosquitoes was published in 1901,
a friend came to me and said that he had heard some army
people at the Chevy Chase Club talking vigorously about the
way I had treated Dr. Reed in the book. I then became aware
for the first time that, contrary to what I had stated on pp.
122-23 of the book. Dr. Reed had undertaken his mosquito
investigation on his own initiative and without suggestion from
the Surgeon-General. I was at that time preparing an article
for the Review of Reviews on this general subject, and I went
immediately to the Army Medical Museum to explain matters
to Dr. Reed. He received me very kindly and said that he

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could readily see how I had fallen into the error. I showed him
the manuscript of my Review of Reviews article, which he
approved. A litde later another article of mine (illustrated this
time) was published in the Century Magazine for October, 1903,
entitled "Yellow Fever and Mosquitoes," in which the statements
were based on exact information that Dr. Reed had given me.

The truth is that while Reed and his Commission were at
work in Havana the Surgeon-General of the Army and I met
almost daily at the Cosmos Club and talked over matters of
common interest. In fact, I talked often with the General on
this subject of the carriage of disease by mosquitoes, and, since
I was busy that summer working on the insect fauna of human
excreta, with a special reference to the carriage of typhoid, we
had many discussions on the subject of typhoid in the army
concentration camps in 1898. I naturally assumed that Dr. Reed
had had his definite instructions from the Surgeon-General.

Just here it will be interesting to quote a letter received from
Dr. Reed and dated January 13, 1901:

DEAR DR. HOWARD:

I enclose a copy of the Order relating to the Protection Against
Mosquitoes. Of course you have already heard from Dr. Sternberg of
our complete success in repeating our former observations. The mos-
quito theory for the propagation of yellow fever is no longer a "theory,"
but a well-established fact. Isn't it enough to make a fellow happy?
Anopheles and Culex are a gay old pair! What havoc they have
wrought to our species during the last three centuries! But with
Howard and kerosene we are going to knock them out.

With best wishes,

Sincerely yours,

WALTER REED.

P. S.— Major J. R. Kean, Surgeon, U. S. A., was the Acdng-Chief
Surgeon of the Division of Cuba at the time this Order was published,
and it was he who drew it up and recommended it to General Wood.
He should have credit for it.

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This is all very interesting and has much historical value.
W. C. Gorgas, who was then a major in the Medical Corps,
was put in charge of the clean-up of Havana on the basis of
the just proved carriage of yellow fever by mosquitoes.

Shortly after this the United States began the construction of
the Panama Canal. The principal sanitarians of the country,
remembering the disastrous ending of the effort made by the
French under de Lesseps to construct a canal there, were greatly
exercised over the sanitary aspects of the problem, and just at
the time when the Panama Canal Commission was authorized
by Congress, a committee of medical men went before President
Roosevelt to urge the appointment of a thoroughly competent
sanitarian as a member of the Commission. I shall tell in another
chapter the story of this interesting interview. The world knows
that Colonel Gorgas, fresh from his clean-up of Havana, was
given full charge of the sanitary work in Panama.

Before he started for the Isthmus, Colonel Gorgas called at
my office, and brought with him Mr. J. A. Le Prince, an engineer
who had been with him in his Havana work, and we talked
at some length of mosquitoes and mosquito remedies. I was
then planning the Carnegie monograph, and asked Colonel
Gorgas if he would have some one collect for me all the different
species that could be found down there. He smilingly replied,
"I'll have to turn that over to Mr. Le Prince." And Le Prince,
with an amiable grin said, "Well, Doctor, I'll have to do it
right away, because in a few weeks there won't be any mosqui-
toes left." I tell this as indicative of the confidence with which
the two men went to work. In a book published some years later
by Mr. Le Prince and Dr. Orenstein I tell this story in the
introductory note that I wrote for the volume, at their request.

In the late spring of 1901 I was invited to give the popular
lecture before the Royal Society of Canada, and my subject

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was "Insects and Disease." The Governor-General of Canada
presided and introduced me. When I came to the subject of the
so-called Tsetse fly disease, I said that it had just been discovered
that the disease was not caused by a poison peculiar to the flies,
but that they were carriers of the disease organism from one
animal to another. I said that this discovery had just been made
by Surgeon-Major Bruce, who at that moment was shut up in
Ladysmith by the beleaguering Boer Army. I went on to say
something about the sympathy that I and my friends had with
the British in that war when suddenly a cannon was fired
outside the hall. Cheers were heard, a military band struck up,
and an aide-de-camp came into the hall, mounted the platform
and gave a despatch to the Governor-General, who interrupted
me to announce that Ladysmith had been relieved.

Before we leave the subject of yellow fever I must tell one
more anecdote. In the summer of 1931, while I was on my way
from Washington to France by the western route, we passed
through the Panama Canal, and some of the men in the Canal
Zone gave me a very delightful dinner at the Miramar Club
in old Panama City. One of the speakers (I think it was Dr.
Clark, the Director of the Gorgas Institute Laboratories at
Balboa, who was with the Sanitarians during the digging of
the canal) told this story. He said that one day he remarked
to General (then Colonel) Gorgas, "Aren't you weighed down
by the enormous responsibility of your task?"

"Not in the least," said Gorgas, "I am carefree, comparatively.
On questions of bacteriology I rely on Dr. Welch of Johns
Hopkins. On questions relating to yellow fever I rely on Dr.
Carter of the Public Health Service. On questions of mosquitoes
I rely on Dr. Howard of the Department of Agriculture. Theirs

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

is the responsibility. And I don't believe that they feel weighed
down by it, either."

This was a graceful and altogether too modest statement, but
I was delighted to hear it, as it brought my name in.

But to go back to malaria. Of course the great impetus of
Ross's discovery in Calcutta was largely responsible for the fact
that Walter Reed took up so enthusiastically his investigations
into yellow fever at Havana. He had been much at the Johns
Hopkins Laboratories in Baltimore and knew Dr. W. S. Thayer,
who had just returned from Italy. Thayer, who had been a great
student of malaria, went to Italy to study the results gained by
Battista Grassi and his colleagues, who, it will be remembered,
disputed with Ross the discovery of the carriage of human mala-
ria by Anopheles, or, at least, the priority of this discovery. I re-
member well that after this trip Thayer came over to Washington
to talk to me about the simplest way to differentiate Anopheles
from other mosquitoes. I had pointed out in my publications
that in one of the sexes of Anopheles the labial palpi are almost
as long as the proboscis, whereas in the corresponding sex of
Culex they are very short. Thayer came to me with the astound-
ing statement that he had found the palpi to be much longer
than the proboscis, and when I came to examine his specimens
I found that he had mistaken the front legs for the palpi.
Rather a good joke on so eminent a man!

I had been corresponding with Ross and had sent him my
publications, and he in return had sent me his admirable little
book entitled "Mosquito Brigades." And then in the summer of
1905 the Board of Directors of the International Exposition held
at St. Louis organized an International Congress of Arts and
Sciences and sent Simon Newcomb (who was to be the presi-
dent of the congress), Hugo Miinsterberg of Harvard, and
Professor Small, the economist, of the University of Chicago,

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to Europe to invite personally a certain number of eminent
men to come over to St. Louis at the expense o£ the Exposition
Fund, and read papers at this great congress. Ross was one of
the men invited, and I met him for the first time at St. Louis.
He was then a vigorous, apparently athletic, youthful man, I
should say in his thirties. I took to him at once, and he was
very good to me. We hobnobbed quite a bit, since we were
both so interested in the mosquito question. He read a rather
important paper in which he went into the question of Anopheles
dispersion, treating it somewhat from the mathematical point
of view. In talking about this paper with me, he told me that
he was more interested in mathematics and in poetry than he
was in medicine or entomology.

In the year of the St. Louis Fair, by the way, there was an
outbreak of yellow fever at Laredo, and the following year a
similar one at New Orleans — the last, we all hope and expect,
that will ever occur in the United States. I mention the matter
here incidentally because Mr. August Busck, who was then in
charge of the exhibit of the Bureau of Entomology at the Fair,
found the Yellow Fever Mosquito on the Fair Grounds and
breeding in some numbers. It is therefore obvious that should
any of the visitors to the Fair from Central American countries
have been infected, there would have been a catastrophic out-
break of the disease at St. Louis.

In the following year I was visited in Washington by Pro-
fessor Rubert Boyce of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medi-
cine, and his friend and travelling companion. Viscount Mount-
morris. They came with letters of introduction from Major Ross,
and arrived, as I recollect, some time in August. Yellow fever
was then rampant in New Orleans. I had just returned from
Europe, and was trying to finish up accumulated business so
that I might go down there. Professor Boyce (afterwards Sir

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Rubert) was anxious to go to New Orleans at once, to watch
the work then being carried on so admirably by the U. S.
Public Health Service under Dr. J. H. White. I furnished him
with collecting materials and warned him that when he got to
New Orleans he would probably have great difficulty in leaving
on account of the very strict quarantines, which, of course, now
seem to us rather absurd. He was quite ready to run all risks,
and when I, anticipating his possible difficulties, offered to help
him financially, he grinned in a grateful but rather superior
way, thanked me and said that Liverpool's shipping interests
would keep him supplied with money. I did not know at the
time that he was the son-in-law of a great shipping magnate
who, I believe, was a backer of the Liverpool School.

Lord Mountmorris, who was with him, was then a young
man in his early thirties, and greatly interested in medical work.
He did not go to New Orleans with Professor Boyce, but
remained in Washington for some days. I remember that one
night a group of us were chatting at the Cosmos Club about
national agreements and disagreements and I suggested that
national differences were rather trivial as compared to ethnical
differences. Turning to Mountmorris, I said, "Speaking racially,
I am just as good an Englishman as you are."

"Oh, dear me, I'm Irish," he said, and there was a general
and hearty laugh.

Professor Boyce's stay in New Orleans interested him greatly.
Dr. White put him upon one of the important committees, and
he worked hard. But the emergency was soon past, and he
was able to get away to the West Indies in the early autumn.
His experiences are well described in his very readable book
"Insects and Man," published in England a year later.

But although I started to get back to malaria, I see that I
have been writing of yellow fever again, and I must really add

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a word or two about my own impressions o£ New Orleans
during that fateful year. I returned from Europe in early August,
and almost the first news that met me at New York was that
the yellow fever situation in New Orleans was very serious and
that many people had died of the disease, among them my old
friend. Archbishop Chapelle. I was anxious to go down there
as speedily as possible, but I found many things to attend to
in Washington, so my departure was somewhat delayed. I had
some work to do in Texas in regard to the Cotton Boll Weevil
situation, and knew that if I went to New Orleans first, Texas
quarantines would greatly postpone my entrance into that State.
So I went to Texas first by way of St. Louis and the so-called
Katy Railroad, and it must have been late in October or early
in November before I arrived in New Orleans. By that time
the emergency was past and the last case of yellow fever had
been discovered. The city was recovering from its fright, and
a feeling of great optimism prevailed. As I was registering at
the St. Charles Hotel, I remarked cheerfully to the clerk, "Are
there any mosquitoes about?" He said, "No, we killed the last
one some time ago." Just at that moment unfortunately I
looked at my left hand and there was an undoubted yellow
fever mosquito quite ready to puncture me.

This reminds me of an interesting thing that occurred while
I was still in Texas. I arrived at San Antonio late one night
and went to my old hotel, the Menger, only to find that there
was a big convention in town and that all of the rooms were
occupied. The room clerk, an old acquaintance, said that he
could give me a cot in a room with three other men. I accepted
and went up with my luggage. As I was preparing for bed
(there being no one else in the room at the time), I heard
footsteps in the hall, the door opened and in came the other

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three men. I pulled out my hand lens, knelt on my cot and
began to examine a spot on the wall.

"What are you doing?" said one of my roommates.

"I have just found a yellow fever mosquito," I said.

"My God!" said one of them, and they collected their luggage
and left, leaving the whole room to me.

I spent a number of days in New Orleans, talking with Dr.
White and going about with several of his able assistants (Dr.
Rupert Blue, afterwards Surgeon-General of the Public Health
Service, was one of them). I saw several demonstrations of fumi-
gants, took a lot of photographs, and finally returned to Wash-
ington filled with enthusiasm over the wonderful results
accomplished by Dr. White and his able assistants and the
organizations of the prominent citizens of New Orleans. It was a
magnificent demonstration of the value of the discovery of the
mosquito carriage of the disease. The work carried on and based
on this discovery undoubtedly saved thousands of lives, and
established a fine confidence in the minds of almost everyone
in our ability to prevent the disease in the future.

I was delighted when I was told by one or two of the leading
citizens that they had made excellent use of my book on
mosquitoes and their prevention and destruction, published four
years before.

And now definitely to return to malaria: I visited the historic
Roman Campagna for the first time in 1902, but I was in Italy
for another purpose and did not meet the workers on malaria
on this journey. I did, however, get an idea, and a very vivid
one, of the comparative poverty of that region from the agri-
cultural point of view, a natural consequence of generations of
saturation by this disease.

Later, by reading Italian publications, and by the accounts

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of Italian efforts published in other languages, I became thor-
oughly familiar with the great work that had been organized
there, and in 1905 met some of the workers and talked with
them.

It was not, however, until 1910 that I had my first insight
into the great economic importance of the results that had been
accomplished under the auspices of the great Italian society for
the study of malaria, supported, as it was, not only by govern-
ment subsidy, but by a large sum from the privy purse of the
King. I landed at Naples in early June, and in company with
a very delightful young physician from Philadelphia, Dr. Vail,
whom I had met on the steamer, went up to Rome and called
on Dr. Angelo Celli at the Medical Department of the University
of Rome. I had corresponded with Celli and had read his fine
book on malaria in the Enghsh translation, and I knew the
remarkable results of his experiments on the Campagna in the
way of protecting the agricultural laborers, engaged in the
harvest, by the screening of their huts, and the railway employees
by the screening of the station buildings. This had always seemed
to me a palliative only. I had always been and still am an
advocate of Anopheles destruction. I may state incidentally that
when the Rockefeller Institute financed Dr. C. C. Bass in his
quininization work in Bolivar County, Mississippi, I suggested
to Dr. Rose, then director of the Health Department of the
Institute, that another county in the same State be selected, and
that I be given the opportunity to control malaria there solely by
Anopheles destruction. So when I met Celli that morning I
told him about all this, and his instant reply was that his method
of protection and quininization was much cheaper, and that
mosquito control on the Campagna was entirely out of the
question, largely on account of the enormous expense. Drainage
operations were very difficult on account of the character of the

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soil — mainly volcanic tufa. As a matter of fact, however, exten-
sive drainage operations had been carried out in this very region
by the early Etruscans, as Celli himself had pointed out in his
book.

The visit v^^as a delightful one. Celli had to give a lecture, and
he introduced me to Dr. Tiraboschi, an authority on fleas, w^ho
took us to his laboratory and talked Medical Entomology to us
for an hour or two.

Before leaving us, Celli made an appointment to take us out
into the historic regions of the Campagna on the following
morning, which happened to be Sunday.

That was a great day. We took the train at an early hour
and got off at one of the stations where the buildings had been
protected during the early screening days and before the adop-
tion of the universal quininization. Celli, who spoke French very
well, and I were so interested in our talk that we barely suc-
ceeded in leaving the train before it started on again, and I
left my camera in the railroad carriage. Dr. Vail, however, was
with us and kept his presence of mind and also his camera,
which was lucky, as he took some excellent snapshots in the
course of the day. There was also with us Dr. Ivantcheff of
Bulgaria, who had been the Health Officer of the Bulgarian
troops in a recent outbreak in the Balkans and who had come
on to Rome to study malaria.

The four of us walked about through the fields for the rest
of the morning. What a contrast the Campagna offered to the
scenes of eight years before! Then the aspect was comparatively
desolate. The few inhabitants showed plainly the effects of
chronic malaria, their faces emaciated, their eyes yellow, and
the children with the characteristic pot-bellies, denoting enlarged
spleens. But now in 1910, agriculture was flourishing. Although
it was only June, they were already cutting the third crop of

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lucern. Capital had come down from die north, and many
barns and other agricultural buildings had been erected. We
saw groups of people coming back from early Mass. The women
were rosy-cheeked and vigorous, and the bright-eyed, active
children clustered around Celli and begged for a story. Celli,
by the way, was an obvious favorite with all of the peasants. They
seemed to realize that he was largely the author of the vastly
improved conditions. Dr. Vail photographed him talking to a
group of the children, and from this photograph I made
a lantern slide that I have often used in public lectures since
that day.

I wish that I had made notes of many of the interesting things
that Celli said. However the impression of his delightful per-
sonality has remained with me ever since. Knowing of Ross's
very decided opinion concerning the Italian School and of his
more vigorous denunciation of their methods, I asked Celli
rather jocularly about "our mutual friend Ross," He smiled
amiably and said that he and Ross were very good friends, and
that he had contributed a chapter on the malarial situation in
Italy for Ross's big book on malaria that had just been or was
about to be published in London. I told him that I also had con-
tributed a chapter to that work, and that in it I had described
the anti-malarial measures begun in the United States.

We walked until one o'clock, interviewing peasants, taking
photographs, and examining the few irrigating ditches, where
I had no difficulty in finding active anopheles larvae. Thus we
crossed from the railway over a good stretch of land to a
tramway to the east and then to a wayside inn where we had
a very excellent luncheon. And then we found that the tramcars
did not run on Sunday. We were ten or twelve miles from
Rome, and the day was hot. Celli proved himself a man of
resource and asked the proprietor of the little inn about a

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

vehicle of some kind. There was nothing to be had except a
big two-wheeled haycart without springs and drawn by a single
horse. The innkeeper, however, was a very agreeable man, and
he evidently had a great admiration for Celli. He placed four
chairs in the cart, and we jolted into Rome along the famous
but badly conditioned Appian Way. Celli called it "our triumphal
procession into Rome."

That was the last time I ever saw Celli except that he came
down to the train to see me off for France the next morning.
He died a year or so later. He was a wonderful man, and Italy
owes him much.

I have said that I left my camera on the train on Sunday
morning. We telegraphed ahead, notifying the conductor, and
asked him to leave the camera at the station in Rome, but on
the following morning it had not arrived and I went on to
Marseilles without it. Celli promised to get it for me and for-
ward it to the American Express Company at Marseilles. I
waited for it there four or five days, and then, having to go on
to Spain and Portugal, bought a new camera. I remember with
great chagrin that I did not learn in the shop exactly how to
operate it, with the result that some very interesting snapshots
I took in Spain and Portugal were flat failures. It may be of
interest to state that when I arrived in Paris some weeks later
I found my camera at the American Express Company, where
it had been forwarded from Marseilles, and I had to pay what
seemed to me a very large sum in the way of customs' duty and
forwarding charges. The only photographic record of this very
interesting journey consists, therefore, in the excellent photo-
graphs taken by Dr. Vail in Italy.

On the afternoon before our expedition to the Campagna,
and after our visit to Dr. Tiraboschi, I called at the laboratory
of the famous Battista Grassi. I found him to be a short stocky

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man, with his hair en brosse, German fashion. In fact his
atmosphere was distinctly German, and I learned later that he
had studied in Germany and had married a German girl.
Finding that I could not speak Italian very well, he refused to
speak French, and our talk was wholly in German. He also
declined to talk with me about mosquitoes and malaria, but
insisted on discussing in preference the Aphidids of the genus
Phylloxera, a subject in which he was then interested. Although
I had assisted Riley and Monell in editing their paper on the
insects of this group, I was not especially interested in the subject,
and left Grassi in a rather disappointed frame of mind.

But things changed. The Great War came and Germany was
defeated, and when I visited Italy in 1920, Silvestri of Portici,
happening to be in Rome when I was there, and happening
also to be a friend and admirer of Grassi, brought him down
to the Quirinal Hotel to talk. What a change! Grassi, who
had in the meantime been made a senator of the Italian
kingdom, according to the commendable custom they have in
Italy of rewarding men of prominence, was no longer German.
He spoke French fluently and with all the suave manners of a
Frenchman. Moreover, he had already begun large-scale experi-
ments at Fumacino, south of Rome, in the way of malarial
control, and he had adopted Celli's manners and methods with
the peasants. I must confess that these people had apparently
taken him into their hearts and had become convinced that he
was their friend and was laboring for their good.

In 1923 I visited Rome again and went with Grassi down to
Fumacino, where he staged a demonstration of his method
of fumigating stables. He showed me a shallow lake into which
he was thinking of introducing Gambusia, and also a school
in which the pupils were being told the necessary facts about
malaria. Furthermore, he told me how he had finally been able

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to discover the mating habits o£ Anopheles. It was at a pigsty,
and just before dusk the males came swarming out and hovered
about, waiting for the females. Then they coupled with them
during flight and soon disappeared. We drove back to Rome
just at dusk, stopping at a temporary laboratory, where I had
the pleasure of meeting Signor Negri, then one of Grassi's prin-
cipal assistants. Grassi talked much to me about his own claims
to be acknowledged as the real discoverer of the transfer of
human malaria by Anopheles. He said that Ross had antici-
pated him only in the discovery of bird malaria, since Ross had
studied first the malaria of the sparrow in Calcutta. Ross had
already received the Nobel Prize, and Grassi was very indignant.
He told me that some German writer had taken his side, and
that he had written a long paper on the subject. He wished to
have me translate this into English and have it pubhshed in
the United States. But he never sent it to me, and I hardly
believe that I would have done it in any event, since I think
that the fame that came to Ross was justified.

One interesting little incident of our auto journey from Fuma-
cino back to Rome should be told. We were passing a peasants'
house in the middle of a cultivated field, where a man and his
wife were working. The automobile stopped and the Senator
called out, "Ho, Giuseppe!" The man dropped his hoe, but,
instead of coming down to the road to see us, he went off into
the house, while his wife came down to the gate, smiling a
cordial welcome. There was a little talk in Italian, and while
I was thinking that the man had purposely avoided us, he came
out of the house with a bottle of wine in one hand and three
eggs in the other. Knowing that the Senator did not drink, he
offered me the wine, and insisted that Grassi should take the
eggs. I took a drink, and Grassi, after protesting, put the eggs
carefully into his pocket, and then he said to me, "Giuseppe,

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here, is a great anarchist," and then to Giuseppe, "This gentle-
man is an American." Whereupon I remarked, "Yes, and we
have no anarchists in America." To which Giuseppe instandy
repHed, "You are mistaken. I have a cousin who hves in
Chicago, and he is a much more pronounced anarchist than I
am." This staggered me so that I made no reply, and we went
on into Rome. The Senator explained on the way that the pre-
vious winter Giuseppe had stabbed a man in a fight and had
been put in prison. He himself had supported the wife during
this time and eventually had had Giuseppe released. The gift
of the three eggs was from gratitude, and it was repeated every
time the Senator passed the house on his way to Fumacino.

That was the last time I saw Grassi. He had aged gready
since 1910, and had lost the sight of one of his eyes. Before I
stop these anecdotes about him, I must mention the fact that
on one of mv visits I was the first to inform him of Sambon's
theory that Pellagra is carried by Simulium. He characterized
this as nonsense and said that he knew many cases in
Italy where there was Pellagra and where Simulium did not
exist.

Again, on a later visit, I asked him about the efficacy of bats
as devourers of malaria mosquitoes, and of the project that an
engineer officer of the Italian Army had advanced (after visiting
San Antonio, Texas, during the war, and making the acquaint-
ance of Dr. A. R. Campbell) of erecting bat roosts on the Cam-
pagna. He replied that MussoHni had asked him for his opinion
and that he had replied that it was nonsense. He told him
further that he knew many very bad malarial localities in Italy
where bats were most numerous.

Grassi was perhaps one of the best-informed general zoologists
in Italy, and did a great deal of admirable work. He died, I
think, in 1924. Since his death the Rockefeller Foundation of

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New York has stationed an admirable man, Dr. L. W. Hackett,
in Rome, where he is conducting a great work against malaria.

It seems strange that the possible usefulness of economic en-
tomology in the World War was not at once appreciated. I
am not sure, but I think that the English realized the value of
professional entomological knowledge before any of the other
battling nations. I remember that Mr. R. A. Peocock, a very
competent man, although not known as an applied entomologist,
went over to France at an early date to assist the men who
were studying trench fever. Later other excellent men were
commissioned by the English government and sent to different
points. For example, H. Maxwell-Lefroy was sent to Mesopo-
tamia. At a comparatively early date. Professor (afterwards Sir)
Arthur Shipley wrote a book entitled "The Minor Horrors of
the War," and followed it with another entitled "More Minor
Horrors." When the relationship between typhus and trench
fever was established and the body louse was thoroughly ac-
cepted as the transmitting agent, the Germans began an inten-
sive study of this insect. A large book was prepared by Dr. A.
Haase, whose investigations had been carried on in a camp o£
Russian prisoners.

The United States government was much slower in accepting
the offers of numerous trained economic entomologists who were
anxious to be of service. Some enlisted in the ranks, and their
valuable knowledge was not used. It seemed to some of us that
in certain respects it was unfortunate that Dr. Gorgas should
have been the Surgeon-General of the Army, for he seemed
indifferent as to malarial probabilities — for example, in his selec-
tion of many of the great concentration camp sites. A number
of these were placed at points where mosquitoes, including
Anopheles, were notoriously abundant. I imagine that it was
his success in insect control in Panama that brought about this
apparent indifference. When our country was getting ready, I

[■38]

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

wrote him that there were many men, well trained in applied
entomology, who could be used to advantage and who were
anxious for service. Possibly he never saw my letter, but I
received a reply from his office, signed by one of his assistants,
stating that what they needed was men trained in sanitary
engineering, such as they had employed at Panama, but that
they did not need entomologists — men "trained to count the
spots on a mosquito's wing." This seemed stupidly absurd to
me, since it was perfectly obvious to a clear mind that as soon
as a disease is discovered to be carried by an insect, almost the
first man to be called in is the man who has been trained in
insect life and the best ways of controlling it. Later, however,
there was something of a change. Van Dine and Herms were
commissioned and well placed in two of the big camps near
San Antonio. Middleton, although not commissioned, was used
in the same capacity in a more northern camp. And there were
others, although I do not recall their names. At the close of
the war. Van Dine was sent to New York to assist in the
delousing of the returning troops, and Hutchinson did elaborate
work with the housefly and the body louse both at Washington
and at New Orleans. So far as I know, no entomologists were
sent to France on account of their entomological knowledge,
but many did go as private soldiers. A notable example was
H. L. Parker, who rose to a captaincy. Still later he got a
Doctorate from the University of Paris, and is at this time in
charge of the U. S. European Parasite Laboratory at Hyeres.

Much of this I summed up, together with many other in-
stances in which the entomologists helped during those strenuous
times in an article entitled "Entomology and the War," pub-
lished in the Scientific Monthly}

^Volume 8, No. 2, pp. 109-117, Feb. 1919. Repriflted in the Smithsonian
Annual Report for 1919, pp. 411-419, 1921.

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

Writing of the strenuous days of nineteen sixteen to eighteen
naturally reminds me that food contamination by the housefly
in concentration camps and wherever great bodies of men are
brought together is a subject upon which we have not touched.
I began to study the housefly carefully as early as 1896. I pub-
lished a special bulletin about it a little later, and, as shown in
a previous chapter, went thoroughly into the question of food
contamination by flies coming from human excreta. I like to
think that my investigations and publications helped to start
the widespread housefly crusade in the early part of the century.
Surely a book that I published in 191 1 under the tide "The
Housefly — Disease Carrier" ^ lent a boost to the crusade. It is
true that typhoid inoculation was brought forward only a few
years later, and that by it the importance of the housefly as a
typhoid carrier was greatly lessened. But the pestiferous litde
creature carries other diseases beside typhoid, and, by the aid
of boards of healdi and citizens' committees, the crusade was
continued with excellent effect. It is true that the gradual dis-
appearance of horses in large cities, because of the extraordinary
development of the automobile industry, has been responsible
for the great reduction in the number of flies in cities, since the
housefly used to breed principally in horse manure. But the
crusade was an admirable one, and I am very glad to have
taken part in it. The United States really led the way in this
direction, although England took it up shortly after and excel-
lent work was done in London. Other countries followed. My
book was translated into Russian, Hungarian and Spanish; and
I learn that since the war intensive anti-housefly work has been
begun in Italy. My dear friend. Dr. Jablonowski of Budapest,
began to translate the book as soon as he received it, and he

1 Frederick A. Stokes & Co. New York.

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

brought his manuscript with him to the Entomological Con-
gress at Oxford in 1912 for me to read. The World War, how-
ever, came on so soon thereafter that his translation was not
pubHshed until 1917. He has recently written me that it was
used as a reader in the public schools, and that very dilapidated
copies are still to be seen in the school libraries.

Why did the world endure the housefly so long? I remember
a meeting of the American Civic Association in Washington.
Dr. Woods Hutchinson of New York talked to the meeting
about the housefly. He said very bad things about it and com-
mended the Association on its strenuous efforts to promote the
warfare against it. At the conclusion of his lecture, a dear old
lady arose in the audience and said, with breathless indignation,
"In the name of the women of the United States and of that of
the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, I protest
against the wholesale murder of these defenseless creatures."
Perhaps that was one of the reasons.

But I must not leave the subject of the housefly without telling
one more story. In the early autumn of 1912 an international
congress of hygiene and demography was held at Washington
and was attended by many eminent sanitarians from all parts
of the world. There was a section on the Zoological Aspects of
Sanitation, presided over by the late Dr. Herman P. Biggs — at
that time, I think. Chairman of the Board of Health of the
City of New York, and a very eminent man. I had known him
when he was a litde boy at Trumansburg, New York, and I
think that I was the first one to interest him in natural history
studies. My house guest at the time was Dr. George H. F.
Nuttall, a famous parasitologist and head of the Quick Labora-
tory of Cambridge University, England. We went together to
this zoological section. Dr. Mesnil of the Institut Pasteur at
Paris was to have been the principal speaker, but for some

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

reason he did not attend. I was asked to make the opening
address. In deference to Mesnil, I spoke especially of the ad-
mirable work done by the Pasteur Institute, instancing particu-
larly the fundamental discovery of the malarial organism by
Laveran; also the work of Marchoux and Salimbeni against
Yellow Fever in Rio di Janeiro and of that of the brothers
Sergent on Malaria in Algeria. I spoke more or less historically
and wound up with some rather extensive remarks about the
housefly, as I had at that time only recently published my book
on this insect. Dr. Nuttall was the next speaker, and in the
intensive discussion that followed, the housefly was almost the
only creature mentioned. The last to speak was Dr. C. V.
Chapin, the health authority of Rhode Island, who rather threw
cold water on the importance of the housefly by stating that its
importance as a carrier of typhoid in well-sanitated cities was
by no means proved, and that we should have more laboratory
demonstrations. He further stated that a close mathematical
study of the spread of typhoid in cities should be made on the
same general lines as the mathematical studies on the spread
of malaria by Sir Ronald Ross.

I was called upon to close the discussion, and I at once tried
to overcome the impression made by Dr. Chapin. I instanced
Washington as a well-sanitated city in which there could be
no doubt as to the importance of the housefly in the spread of
typhoid. I called attention to the human excrement deposited
in alley-ways during the hot summer nights in Washington,
and of the swarming upon these excreta by houseflies in the
immediate neighborhood of the open windows of kitchens and
dining-rooms, especially in the lower portions of the city. I
showed that it had been proved that a definite per cent, say five,
of persons who had recovered from typhoid were chronic car-
riers, and that therefore a certain definite proportion of these

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

excreta were dangerous. Further that typhoid must be carried
frequently to food suppUes by the flies that swarmed upon these
droppings. I made it as strong as I could.

To my surprise, Dr. Biggs asked Dr. Nuttall if he had any-
thing more to say. Nuttall got up in his quiet way and said,
as I remember it, "I have studied the housefly and its bacterial
flora and content taken in the classrooms at Cambridge and in
the college bakehouses and have isolated typhoid organisms
from all of them. After these studies, which have been pro-
longed, / consider that a single contaminated housefly is a greater
source of danger than many gallons of polluted water. What
we need in considering this question is not mathematics but
common sense!"

This finished the discussion, and I feel sure that the impres-
sion made upon the minds of the large audience was not the one
desired by Dr. Chapin. I have often told this story since in
lectures, and once, I remember, at one of Graham Bell's Wednes-
day Evenings, when Dr. Simmons, long-time secretary of the
American Medical Association, and other medical men, were
present. I am sure that Nuttall's words have had due weight
in the minds of many important men.

In fact, they often come up in my mind when I am reading
some of the rather laborious and possibly far-fetched adaptations
of mathematics to other branches of biological science.

[143]

Chapter VII

R.

-UNNiNG back for nearly two hundred years, every once in
a while some one has been filled with the idea that silk culture
would prosper in the United States. I seem to remember that
colonists in South Carolina began it. Down to the present time
it has never amounted to anything. The so-called Morus multi-
caulis craze in the 1830's resulted in the planting of thousands
of mulberry trees and in the starting of exaggerated ideas on
the part of many people, especially, perhaps, in the state of
Connecticut, with the result that many small fortunes were lost.
When I came to Washington in November, 1878, Professor
Riley had a good stock of silkworm eggs of a race that he had
been trying to develop in Missouri and that fed upon the leaves
of the Osage orange {Maclura aurantiaca) . The following spring
these eggs hatched, and I saw the domestic silkworm for the
first time. Riley had written an article about silkworms in one
of his latest Missouri reports, and following the directions in
this article I fed the worms to full growth, when they spun
their cocoons from which later the moths issued and laid a new
lot of eggs. Some of the high officials in the Department of
Agriculture were interested, and we did the same thing again
the following year.

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

In the meantime Riley resigned in the spring o£ 1879, and
Professor Comstock was put in his place. Before leaving the
Department, however, Riley had me write a manual of silk
culture, which was published over his signature before he left.

Riley returned to the Department in 1881, and after a year
or two took up the subject of silk culture rather vigorously. He
realized that the success of the industry in this country would
depend largely on our ability economically to reel the cocoons,
and he had heard of an electric reel invented by General Serrell,
an American then living in France. He was fortunately able to
secure the services of Philip Walker, a nephew of General
Serrell's, a young man of much ability and charm. He brought
him to Washington, established a Serrell reel, sent out silkworm
eggs to correspondents, and helped two or three local associa-
tions interested in the matter, notably a California organization,
one in Louisiana, and a rather pretentious "Women's Silk Cul-
ture Association" that had its headquarters for some time in
Philadelphia. Congress made small special appropriations for
this work, which were repeated for several years.

At the expiration of this time Mr. Walker became convinced
that the industry could not succeed in the absence of an import
duty on raw silk, and he stated this frankly to committees of
the House of Representatives.

At that time the McKinley Tariff Bill was being prepared
in the House, and a ten per cent duty on raw silk was proposed.
This was naturally strongly opposed by the Silk Manufacturers'
Association and failed, and the matter of silk culture was
dropped by the government for the time being.

In 1898 James Wilson of Iowa was appointed Secretary of
Agriculture. He had been prominently connected with the Iowa
State Agricultural College and Experiment Station and had also
been a member of Congress. Very justly wishing to familiarize

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

himself with the different aspects o£ agriculture over the coun-
try, he travelled extensively, and was much struck by the con-
ditions that existed in the Southern States. He realized the
defects of the one-crop system that then prevailed and thought
much about the possibility of introducing household industries
that would help. He thought of poultry, bee culture, and silk
culture, and when he returned to Washington he consulted me
about the latter project. We had already started bee culture
work on an intelligent basis under Frank Benton, and I argued
the silk matter with the secretary. He was quite firm in his
opinion that it should be tried again. The white mulberry, he
said, is widely distributed in the United States, and the Osage
orange is largely grown both as a hedge plant and as a wind-
break in the Far West. He felt sure that the reeling difficulty
could be overcome. I assured him that the difficulty was so
great that with the machinery then existing it would be im-
possible profitably to reel cocoons here on a large scale, even if the
cocoons were presented gratuitously to the reeling establishments.
He, however, did not believe this, and asked Congress for a
small appropriation (ten thousand dollars, I think).

We decided to buy healthy eggs in quantity from one of the
reliable Italian dealers, to distribute them gratuitously to all
correspondents who wished to raise cocoons, and to accompany
each shipment with The Sil\ Culture Manual, which had been
revised by Walker and republished. Then the plan was to set
up a small reeling establishment in Washington, to buy the
cocoons from our correspondents at standard European prices,
and to reel them, selling the resulting raw silk to American
manufacturers.

This seemed a very logical plan, and it was carried out.

About this time a very competent lady of Charleston, South
Carolina, Miss Henrietta Aiken Kelly, who had been the head

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

of a large and fashionable young woman's school in that city,
had, through a recent long stay in Italy, become much interested
in silk culture as a household side-industry. She corresponded
with us, and, convinced of her ability, I got her to write a new
manual of silk culture. And then I went to Europe to study the
industry, to buy eggs and reeling machinery, and to engage
expert reelers.

I looked up the reels first, and finally, going to Lyons, a great
center for that sort of thing, I bought, with the help of the
American consul, Mr. Covert (a cousin or nephew of Ezra
Cornell), the very latest thing in the shape of a three-basin
reel. After much trouble, Mr. Covert, who was courtesy and
helpfulness personified, succeeded in finding a mother and her
daughter, both expert reelers, who would come to America. It
was a great undertaking for these two French women, and they
made many stipulations, among them the very natural one that
in case of illness or death they should be returned to France at
the expense of the United States government.

The matter of the reel once settled, I went to the South of
France and then on to Italy, studying in both countries the way
the peasants raised the silkworms in their own homes, the
methods of the buyers of cocoons, and the conduct of the bacchi-
cultural laboratories for the safeguarding of the eggs against
the causative micro-organisms of pebrine.

It was during this visit to Italy that I first met a certain
Duke and Duchess. The Duchess was American by birth. Their
large estate was in northern Italy, and practically all the peasants
on the estate raised silkworms. In a near-by town was a large
establishment from which I arranged to buy eggs for our govern-
ment. Thus the place was admirably adapted to my mission in
every way. There were large plantations of mulberry trees of
difFerent ages, and not only did every peasant's home contain the

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

trays for rearing the worms, but the attic of the old castle was
turned into a rather large scale rearing establishment.

I spent one of the pleasantest and most profitable ten days
in my life in August, 1902, with these fine people at the old
castle which stands on the summit of a hill looking north over a
wonderful valley. Fortunately, while I was there the cocoon-
buyers made their annual visit and into the courtyard of the old
casde came the peasants from the estate, men and women each
with huge hampers of cocoons upon their shoulders, and the
children tagging along to see the fun. The cocoon-buyers set up
their scales in the courtyard, and each wicker hamper was
weighed with and without its cocoons. The peasants were in-
tensely interested in the weighing process, and in each case the
weighing machine was surrounded by a struggling and expostu-
lating crowd. Not only did the peasants from the estate bring
out their hampers, but the servants in the castle did the same.
I remember that the cook came out in his white cap and apron,
with a huge and well-filled hamper on his shoulders. I imagine
that the trays in the attic must have been used by these house
servants.

But the silk culture aspects of this stay at the old estate were
by no means the most interesting. I was intensely interested in
the Duke and the Duchess and in their mode of life. Afterwards
I became very much attached to them, and I visited them fre-
quently in later years. In fact, after the Great War they came to
America on a visit and spent some time with Mrs. Howard and
me in Washington.

Although this first visit was made almost wholly for the
purpose of looking up silk cultural matters, this is a good
place to say something about my hosts. During only one of my
visits were there other guests, and usually the three of us used

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

to sit at the dinner table until after midnight, talking of all sorts
of things.

Although the Duke was the most democratic of men, he
could not get away from the fact that he was the head of three
old ducal families. It is true that after his return to Italy he had
broken with the middle-men who ran the estate, and that the
peasants at his suggestion had organized themselves into a
managing body, electing their own headman from among their
own number and consulting together about the management of
the smaller details. This act in itself had made the Duke lose
favor with the middle-men, who virtually controlled most of the
great estates, and to a certain extent with the proprietors them-
selves; while through a novel that he wrote some time later he
made himself unpopular with the Catholic Church. In fact, he
told me once that he was the most unpopular man in Italy. I got
him to write up his agrarian experiment and had it published for
him in an American review.

In spite of his democracy, as I have hinted, he could not get
away from many of the old feudal ideas. The peasants on the
estate were for the most part descendants of the retainers of
his ancestors, as was shown in many ways that were strange to
me as an American. For example, one morning after breakfast
the peasant who happened at the time to be the president of their
organization called to ask the Duke's consent to the marriage
of two of the young peasants.

I shall never forget those long evenings when the dear people
told me about themselves — in fact, gave me the history of their
lives. I made no attempt to respond in like fashion, since my
own story had been so commonplace. Here in a brief and bald
way is what they told me.

As a girl, the Duchess had been small and beautiful and blond.
She was born and had spent her girlhood in one of the Southern

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

States. She was an adventurous youngster, and the home town,
charming as it was, rather irked her. She finally induced her
parents to send her to Boston to study singing. When she got
there she soon found that her voice was not worth while, and
in some way she got a job on a newspaper. I believe that she
did not inform her parents. But Boston did not satisfy her, either,
and she induced the managing editor of her paper (she had
proved herself a clever writer) to send her to England to write
up a certain angle of a rather important aflFair that was transpir-
ing at that time. On the steamer, going over, she met a well-
to-do young Englishman who married her soon after their arrival
in London.

Of course this is all sketchy. I am telling only the bare facts.

Her husband caught a bad cold, and tuberculosis developed.
They went to the Enghadine, where he died of what we used
to call quick consumption. She was broken-hearted and returned
to the Enghadine year after year to do what she could for any
of the tuberculous young English people who used to go there.
Her husband had left her well-to-do.

The Duke's father was an ardent Italian patriot, a friend of
Cavour and of Victor Emmanuel and, of course, of Garibaldi.
But he died when his son was a little child. When the boy had
reached a certain age (twelve or thirteen or perhaps fourteen)
he found out certain things that distressed him extremely, and
in his despair he ran away from home (taking with him, fortu-
nately, papers to prove his identity) . He got down to Naples and
boarded a vessel bound for the Argentine. On reaching Buenos
Aires, he did all sorts of work to support himself, even menial
things. As he grew to manhood, he got a job as a vaquero on
a large cattle ranch owned or managed by an Italian. Here he
had all sorts of adventures and had many accidents. He told
me that almost every bone in his body had been broken at

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

one time or another, and he had adventures with the Indians
that were well worth telling.

He had told the ranchero his history, and it happened that on
a certain visit that the latter made to Buenos Aires he noticed
in a newspaper printed in the Italian language an advertisement
asking for the wherebouts of the young man, with the further
statement that a certain firm of attorneys in Buenos Aires wished
news of him and had information for him that would be to
his advantage. On his return to the ranch, the ranchero showed
the boy the newspaper. They talked it over, and the upshot
was that the young Italian went to the city, learned that his
mother had died, proved his identity, and started for home.

But he did not go direcdy to Italy. The spirit of adventure
and the itch for travel were too strong. He went out to the
Philippines (years before the American occupation), and then
he went to the United States and stayed there many months and
of course learned English, a language which he spoke and wrote
with great fluency for the rest of his life.

Eventually he returned to Italy, assumed his title and claimed
his estates. He found himself a wealthy and much sought-after
man — in fact, a great match. He married and in course of time
his wife presented him with two daughters. And then they had
trouble and she left him. He was hurt beyond measure. Nothing
seemed worth while any more. Life was not worth living, and
he took no care of his health. His physical and mental situation
became desperate. With difficulty his friends induced him to
consult a famous physician, who advised the outdoors and sent
him to the Enghadine. He went to a certain hotel that had
been recommended to him, and from there as headquarters he
took long tramps, sometimes lasting several days.

He had been told that he could have his rooms at the hotel
only until such time as some one who was described as "The

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

Little Sister" should arrive, and that she was expected in two or
three weeks.

One night on his return from a two days' tramp he entered
the dining-hall of his hotel and found that most of the guests
were greatly interested by the presence of a new face, that of a
charming, vivacious little golden-haired woman. It was "The
Little Sister." The Duke was introduced, they became fast
friends, and eventually they fell in love.

But the Duke was married, and he was a Catholic. Italy was
Catholic, and there were no divorce laws even in such obvious
cases as his. And so the lovers lived on, puzzling their brains
for some solution to their difficulties. And this lasted for seven
years.

Then the Duke, through an old relative, made a discovery.
He learned that his father, who, as we have seen, was an ardent
Italian patriot, did not wish his son (he expected a son, of
course) to be born a subject of Austria. And so, when he found
that his wife was about to give birth to their first child, he
carried her off to Paris, and there the baby was born.

I don't see what difference that made, but it seemed to
straighten out the legal difficulties, and the Duke got a French
divorce and then married "The Little Sister."

After a time they went back to Italy and to the old castle, and
the peasants organized a great fete, with a triumphal arch. It
is an interesting story, isn't it.?

To get back to silk culture. Quite as I expected, although I
tried hard for success, the silk culture work under Secretary
Wilson turned out to be an economic failure. We distributed
quantities of certified eggs to many people in many parts of the
country. Some of them who were Europeans with a thorough
knowledge of silk culture, and others who were aided by our

1

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

manual of instruction, raised excellent cocoons and sent them
to Washington in bulk. We paid them the current European
price, and then we reeled the cocoons.

We soon found that our correspondents would not continue
to raise cocoons at the rates we were paying, and we also found
that when we sold the reeled silk we did not receive enough even
to warrant the prices we had paid for the cocoons. So the experi-
ment was abandoned.

Therefore, for many years, I took it that we had fairly well
proved that we can not produce in the United States reeled silk
that in price will compete with the silk received from Japan
and China, where labor is so cheap.

At the San Francisco World's Fair in 1915, a new type of
silk reel was exhibited. A very clever chemist, Guy Wilkinson,
who had made a large sum of money through some invention,
became interested once more in the possibilities of silk culture in
America. He bought a place in Northern California that he
named Serriterre — not far from Chico. He found a Swiss Italian
who had new ideas about planting mulberry as a hedge sur-
rounding arable fields, thus occupying little land space. He also
got the Weber-Vitali reel from San Francisco and engaged the
expert Italian reeler who had been sent over to the Exposition
with it. He raised very excellent cocoons, and his experiment was
rather a promising one. But eventually it failed, and I think
he died.

There have been other attempts since on a larger or smaller
scale, but all have failed except one. That one is now being
carried on with large capital and on new principles at Ensenada,
some miles northeast of San Diego, California. Its promoters
have studied carefully and scientifically every aspect of the in-
dustry in Southern Europe, and they have combined practically
all of the features of the silk industry into one institution. In

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

other words, they are making or are planning to make silk stock-
ings and perhaps other silken things, and are raising their own
silk with which to make them. I have visited this place twice
and have been much impressed by the confidence, ability and
intimate knowledge of its manager, but naturally I am making
no prophecies.

I

[154]

Chapter VIII

T

HE Entomological Service at Washington grew rather won'
derfuUy. Prior to, say, 1890, it was considered a necessary service
but one that needed financially rather small support. Neverthe-
less, I do not wish to underestimate the results accomplished
with small funds and a limited number of workers. We eco-
nomic entomologists did some big things and laid the bases
for much bigger things. What we did attracted the attention
of practical men, and demands came from them to legislative
bodies to spend more money on the work.

And then came in comparatively rapid succession the series
of events that we have already referred to, and that helped to
focus die attention of the world and especially, perhaps, the
people of the United States, on the subject of economic ento-
mology. Not since the Grapevine Phylloxera days in the late
i86o's and 1870's had there been so much excitement caused as
by the discovery of the San Jose scale in eastern United States
orchards in 1892, and the subsequent embargo of practically all
of the countries of the world against American fruit that was
started by a German proclamation in 1898. Then, too, the Gipsy
Moth had been discovered in America only two or three years
earlier, and in 1894 we became distressingly conscious of the

[155]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

fact that the Mexican Cotton Boll Weevil had crossed the Rio
Grande and was a threatening factor in the production of cotton
in Texas and potentially in the whole Cotton Belt. To cap the
climax, an English surgeon in the Indian medical service, Major
(afterwards Sir) Ronald Ross, discovered in 1898 that the mos-
quitoes of a certain genus (Anopheles) were the sole transmitters
of malaria.

Is it any wonder that people began to appreciate the im-
portance of insects as dangerous enemies to mankind, and that
Congress and the state legislatures began to appropriate more
money for the study of these enemies?

Nevertheless, when we view the situation from our present
standpoint, the action of the world as a whole seems rather
slow. The best trained men in the university laboratories con-
tinued their intensive work on non-economic creatures, and
practically only in the agricultural colleges were studies of in-
jurious insects carried on. But in these colleges and in the state
agricultural experiment stations and in the Federal Bureau of
Entomology at Washington there was an almost immediate
response. More and more men were trained. More and more
bright young men were attracted to the subject as a means of
livelihood, and this was encouraged by larger appropriations
from legislative bodies.

So the federal organization of which I happened more or less
accidentally to be chief assumed a new importance. Appropria-
tions began to jump. The service took on a Bureau rank. More
and more men were taken in. Soon our investigations began
necessarily to spread into other countries. The obvious reason
for this was that nearly two-thirds (reckoned by species) of our
first class insect enemies — that is, those insects that damage
us to the extent of hundreds of thousands of dollars annually
— were of foreign origin.

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The rate of growth of the service may be expressed concretely
by the statement that, whereas the annual federal appropriation
for this purpose in 1894 was about thirty thousand dollars, in
1927, when I retired, it approximated three million dollars. An-
other striking change in the public attitude that I have already
pointed out in another book is the fact that in 1876 the Federal
Congress, after a discussion lasting many months, finally passed
a bill appropriating eighteen thousand dollars to be expended
by a commission of three men (none of them connected with
the United States Department of Agriculture) for the investiga-
tion of the Rocky Mountain Locust or Colorado Grasshopper.
And this was done only after a long delay and after the reduc-
tion of the sum from twenty-five thousand dollars and of the
number of members of the commission from five to three.
Whereas in 1929 the Congress (both House and Senate), after
a delay of only a few hours, appropriated four million two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars to be spent by the Depart-
ment of Agriculture in an effort to exterminate the Mediter-
ranean Fruit Fly in Florida.

What shall be said about the years that intervened between
1894 and the present time? Obviously, there was great activity;
obviously, the problems were very great; and obviously, the labors
of the entomologists must have been to some degree successful
in order to justify the confidence implied by the extraordinary
increase in funds. The whole period is filled with memories of
successes and failures, of more or less dramatic incidents, of
wide contacts with remarkable personalities. But it is not an
individual history. As chief of the federal service, my own
life was not what it might seem to an imaginative person. I
stuck steadily to a certain amount of research. Dr. B. T. Gallo-
way, when Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, once said that I
was the only Chief of Bureau to do this. I could not help it: my

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

interest in insects was so great. But my individual work was
petty compared with the work of many men in the Bureau and
in the state organizations.

Think of a young man not long from an agricultural college,
sent suddenly to start a camp laboratory, with a half dozen
assistants and plenty of supplies, on one of the vast Arizona
catde ranges, to investigate the ravenous and extremely injurious
Range Caterpillar. Think of Dr. Hunter, educated at the Uni-
versity of Nebraska and teaching temporarily at the Agricultural
College of Iowa, sent down to southern Texas to begin work on
the Cotton Boll Weevil and to study a great crop with which
he was previously unfamiliar. And yet Wildermuth was entirely
successful in Arizona, and Dr. Hunter not only became an au-
thority on everything connected with cotton and pointed out at an
early date to the Southern planters a perfectly competent way
to grow cotton successfully in spite of the Weevil, but gained the
affection and respect of the whole South. Think of the dozens
of young men sent to foreign countries, to nearly all of the
countries of Europe, to Japan, to China and to India, to Central
America, to South America, to Australia and to other parts of
the world, a few of them linguists and others furnished only
with a keen desire for success, great resource and indomitable
perseverance. How I wish that the stories of some of these men
could be collected and published!

The foreign search for parasites unquestionably appeals to the
imagination more than the work done in our own country. It
involves to an extreme qualities on the part of the workers that
are not called upon to the same extent in work at home. I have
allowed myself to tell stories about two of these men in "The
Insect Menace." I should like to repeat them here, but haven't the
space. In the home work — that is to say, in the United States —
the sense of adventure is naturally not so great, yet there is

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

plenty of adventure o£ a kind in the work, for example, which
was carried on in the great northwestern forests against the
Pine Bark Beedes.

I early hit upon the idea that it was important for the chief
of the service to visit his outlying stations as early and as often
as possible, and these field stations, beginning with 1898, became
very numerous. The value of these visits was partly psychological.
The man working alone or with only one or two assistants, in
a far-away region, away from scientific societies and scientific
companionship, and confronting the most difficult problems, is
likely to grow discouraged at times. In such cases a short visit
from the chief of the service is very encouraging, especially if
the chief sees, as he always does, many things that bring forth
complimentary words. If the worker is patted on the back and
told that he is doing admirably, he goes at the work more
cheerfully and in a much more hopeful spirit.

I remember one very marked instance of this sort of thing. A
minute Thrips was playing havoc with the pear orchards in the
Santa Clara Valley in California. A field laboratory was started
and Dudley Moulton, a promising entomologist (now Commis-
sioner of Agricukure for the state of California), was placed in
charge. After some months' work of an intensive sort, in which
he showed great intelligence and resource, the problem still
promised no solution. The fruit-growers were becoming des-
perate. Some of the most prominent were threatening to cut
down their orchards and sell their land for city lots or for
some other purpose. About this time I dropped in on Mr. Moul-
ton, praised him for the admirable work he had done, and con-
fidently prophesied ultimate success. He told me afterward that
this did him no end of good. He went at his work with renewed
energy and in a few months the end came. He showed the

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

fruit-growers how to handle the Thrips, the danger vanished
and a great industry took on a new lease of life.

And there is a second psychological point connected with
such field visits. As I have shown in an earlier chapter, it was
the routine of the Agricultural Committee of the House (then
in charge of the preparation of the Agricultural Appropriation
Bill — this work is now being done by the Committee on Ap-
propriations) to call the bureau chiefs of the department in early
December to explain the need for estimates that had been sent
in. This is the psychological point: if I could explain to the
Committee that a month or two months before I had visited
the field laboratory engaged in a certain investigation and had
seen the whole situation, the Committee at once realized that I
knew what I was talking about, and, since I am an honest-
looking man, they accepted my word. But if I had been able to
state only that So-and-so had told me of the need, there might
have been some doubt in the minds of the Committee.

So I took many of these field trips, down through the South
to study Boll Weevil conditions and laboratories; into Florida
to visit the laboratory where citrus pests were being studied; out
to California, up to Washington, east to Idaho where as early
as 1898 C. B. Simpson was working on the Codling Moth;
further east to the Bitter Root Valley, where we were working
on the Spotted Fever Tick; down to Kansas, where E. G. Kelly
and afterwards J. R. Horton were engaged with the grain insect
problems; further east to Indiana, to visit J. J. Davis (who later
left the service and is now a professor in Purdue University),
and then out into New England to watch the intensive work
that went on for many years against the Gipsy Moth and the
Brown-tail Moth.

This doesn't sound very adventurous or at all dramatic, for
none of us ever got into what are called "the wilds" (except

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

in the case of the forest entomologists), for we were always close
to some kind of agriculture; but everyone who has ever travelled
extensively among farming communities will appreciate the
wealth of humorous incidents, the great number of unusual
people, and, in a small way, the inconveniences and hardships.

I have just spoken of the forest entomologists. Once when
I was starting out from Washington I told my wife that inci-
dentally I intended to visit a logging camp in northern Cali-
fornia. She begged me not to do it. She said that it would be
dangerous and that I ought not to take any risks. I didn't know
the country, but I reassured her and started out. Eventually,
after a long journey with many stops, I reached Klamath Falls
in the heart of the great forests. I had expected rough quarters
and a roughish life, but there were several omnibuses at the
station. I asked one bus driver which was the best hotel. "Oh,"
he said, in his frank, honest. Western way, "that isn't my hotel.
You'd better go to the White Pelican." Which I did. And the
White Pelican proved to be the best and most up-to-date hotel
that I had seen since I left the east. The pages were in uniform;
there was an electric grill; many rooms had baths; and there was
an elevator service that could hardly be surpassed. I thought of
my wife's fears and went to sleep, probably, with a broad grin
on my face. The next morning a trained assistant called with
an automobile and took me to the camps and the surrounding
forest. I encountered no dangers whatsoever.

These trips were nearly always taken in the summer months.
By the first of September or a little later the chiefs of bureaus
had to be back in Washington to prepare their annual reports
which went to the Secretary of Agriculture on the first of Oc-
tober. The Secretary then wrote his own annual report, based
largely on the information handed in by the chiefs, and this
report he submitted to the President on the first of November.

[i6i]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

The President, having in hand the annual reports of all of his
Cabinet officers, then proceeded during the month of November
to Vi^rite his own annual message to Congress, which of course
was read on the convening of Congress on the first Monday in
December.

Although when we think of the great growth of the Service in
little more than thirty years, brought about by public necessity,
by increased financial means, and above all by good things
accomplished, this growth seems very rapid, still at the same
time it did not seem so rapid to us who were in the middle
of things. I, for example, did not fully appreciate it. It was
really a busy and exciting life, and it was thoroughly congenial.
I did not have time to stop and attempt to think broadly over
the whole field. Important things were pressing all the time.
But there was growing constantly an added respect for the
potentialities of insect life, and an appreciation of the fact not
only that we were doing necessary work but that it was pioneer
work and that we needed more help. We needed more en-
tomologists, trained in the latest methods, and also we needed
the appreciative assistance of workers trained in many other
lines. We began to see that the plant physiologists, the farm
planners (agronomists), the agricultural engineers, the men
trained in chemistry and in physics, could be of the greatest
assistance, if they could be brought to see it. And so we began
eventually and at first very guardedly a campaign of public in-
struction.

We wished above all things to avoid the accusation that we
were trying to scare people unnecessarily. Unfortunately, how-
ever, we did not entirely escape this accusation. The ideas that
we put forth proved to be popular with certain newspaper men
and certain space writers. Some of these people, although trained
writers, did not appreciate the importance of exact scientific

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

truthfulness, and many of my friends, especially those whose
sense of humor was somewhat distorted, were inclined to chaff
us. Professor Frank Wigglesworth Clarke, a famous chemist and
an equally famous joker, once said to me, "I never see you
without thinking, 'Let us spray.' " ^

We have been joked about our extraordinary but well-founded
estimates of money loss, and since we began to talk and to
write seriously about the matter a facetious friend said to me one
day at the Club, "You are as bad as the roadside advertisements.
You make me tired." But I was used to him. He would have
made me tired if he had not said it with a twinkle in his eye
which showed that he really agreed with me.

Thus as time went on in the earlier part of the present century
more and more men came into the work, more new ideas came
to light, and new fields opened up. We gradually came to ap-
preciate that we must know absolutely everything about insects
from the first segmentation of the egg down to the last detail
in the behavior of the adult. Not only must all insects be classi-
fied and named, but we must understand their intimate physi-
ology and all of the things for which we have no better term
than psychological. So as the workers increased in number and
new minds became attracted to our problems, we became encour-
aged and more hopeful. I used to go to my desk of a morning
in an expectant frame of mind. The feeling in the United States
among the entomologists had spread all over the world. The
entomologists of all nations had come to appreciate the fact that
national boundaries did not exist, that we were working for all

* Here is an example of Clarke's readiness in witty response : He was at the time
the President of the American Chemical Society and had not as yet been elected
to the National Academy of Science. He was sitting at the Cosmos Club when
Dr. Ira Remsen, the President of Johns Hopkins University and President of the
National Academy, also a great joker, entered the room and seeing Clarke, said,
"How arc you. Professor Clarke? How goes it with the Comical Society.?" "First
rate," said Clarke. "How goes it with the Notional Academy.?"

[163]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

humanity. Until the very end of my official career, I never
opened my morning mail without the joyful feeling that perhaps
among the letters I would find the announcement of some im-
portant discovery, and frequently that happened. There was thus
the sense of adventure in the work and of adventure of far
import.

I believe that it was not until 1920 that I first began to formu-
late in my mind the enormity of the problem. I had just trans-
lated Bouvier's book, "La Psychologie des Insects," ^ and through
it had become acquainted with the more or less imaginative
early writings of Maeterlinck. I think very likely that these had
a strong effect on me, because during that same summer I wrote
an address to be read as the retiring address of the President of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and
that address concerned itself principally with the subject, "War
against the Insects." I was greatly encouraged by the reception
of this address. Newspaper men and magazine writers took up
the topic, and I suddenly found myself considered as a propa-
gandist, which, for a modest scientific worker supposed to deal
only with facts and not with theories, was at first rather dis-
concerting.

This suggests a rather serious thought. The average scientific
man absorbed in his work does not welcome newspaper pub-
licity. But I have always had a kindly feeling for newspaper
people. And then, too, there have always been in Washington
some of the cleverest men in the newspaper profession. The great
journals have always had representatives there who were very able
men, and I have known many of them. To the best of them,
almost everybody in Washington, from the President down,
would talk freely, confident that the information would not be

^The Century Co., New York, 1920.

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

misused. By talking freely to such men at just the right times, by
not forcing oneself upon them, and by treating their juniors with
courtesy, a scientific man, especially if he be engaged in applied
science, soon finds himself known to the public. That happened
in a minor degree to me. I did not realize its dangers for a long
time; and I am not at all sure now that it is not far more desir-
able than undesirable. At any event, newspaper people have
always been good to me, and I am very sure that their help to
the Service has been great.

The first time that I realized that newspaper notoriety might
be a disservice was many years ago. I had been lecturing before
the National Geographic Society in Washington on the subject
of Medical Entomology. When I came out of the building to
the street I found a tall, fine-looking man, apparently in his
fifties, awaiting me. He introduced himself as Major Louis
Livingston Seaman, and I at once recognized him as a medical
man who had written much, who had been a great traveller and
who was greatly interested in army medicine and hygiene. He
had stirred up the "canned beef" scandal in the Spanish War,
and had recendy published a book entided "The True Triumph
of Japan," which pointed out the great advance that Japan had
made in the Russo-Japanese War in army sanitation. Major
Seaman at once confessed to me that he had had the opinion
that I was a publicity seeker, and that, being in Washington,
he had come to the lecture to convince himself. He was good
enough to say that the lecture was strong and sound, and that
he had entirely changed his opinion of me. Naturally, we later
became very warm friends. But it was a great shock to find out
that so big a man should have formed so unfavorable an im-
pression from the fact that the newspaper men had frequently
quoted me.

Intelligent people who are getting along in years have noticed

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

great changes in the way scientific measures have been handled
by the press in the United States. Back in the 1870's the great
metropoHtan daiHes devoted much space to the accounts of the
meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, and many will remember that when Thomas Huxley
came to the States in 1876 the big New York dailies published
his lectures in full. I well remember, in fact, that when I was a
junior in college we had to digest these lectures as they were
printed in the New Yor\ Tribune.

But there came a great change and it was a degenerative
change. Reports of scientific affairs became greatly shortened.
The flippant reporter developed until there came a time when
almost no scientific functions or other matters were treated
seriously. Intelligent and serious-minded reporters were not
assigned to scientific functions. I remember, for example, a meet-
ing of the American Society of Naturalists held in Chicago
about the end of the last century. The American Society of
Bacteriologists was one of the societies that met with the
naturalists. Professor F. G. Novy of Ann Arbor was down for
a paper on a new bactericide, and I went to hear him. His talk
seemed to me to be very important. He had discovered a new
compound (I think it was a peroxide of one of the benzols)
which was instantly fatal to all forms of bacterial life — as fatal
as direct sunlight. And what a field this discovery seemed to
open up! But the compound was extremely expensive. As I sat
there, listening absorbedly and my mind filled with the great
possibilities suggested, a young chap, apparently not more than
twenty, who was sitting next to me, whispered to me that he
was a cub reporter sent there by one of the great Chicago dailies
to report the meeting and that he could not understand the
import of Dr. Novy's paper. This incident illustrates very well
the news value of scientific stuff to city editors at that time.

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The situation grew to be so bad that the American Association
for the Advancement o£ Science decided to employ a press editor.
The late Theodore Waters, a very clever and intelligent reporter
and magazine writer, was chosen. He was an acknowledged
member of the newspaper fraternity and knew newspaper men
and how they thought. He was employed to see not only that
the best things were properly reported, but that flippant and
derisive articles were not written. I shall mention in another
chapter an amusing story of how he did this.^ With Waters'
efforts the situation began to improve, and this improvement
has gone on rapidly ever since.

A clever scientific man, a chemist, named E. E. Slosson, wrote
a book entitled "Creative Chemistry" and showed to a marked
degree that science may be made vitally interesting by the right
kind of a writer. The eyes of newspaper editors were opened
to the fact that they had been neglecting an enormously inter-
esting field. Mr. Scripps, of one of the great press associations,
got this idea at an early date, and talked much about the subject
with his friend Professor W. E. Ritter of the University of Cali-
fornia. From these conferences came the founding of Science
Service, which has on its board of control representatives from
the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association
for the Advancement of Science to insure the scientific accuracy
of everything put out. Its director was Dr. Slosson, who was

^ Waters, dear fellow, died rather recently. When he left the American Associa-
tion he became connected with the Christian Herald and late in the World War
was sent on a relief supply expedition to the Orient. He had become a great friend
of my youngest daughter, who, he knew, intended to become a newspaper woman,
and he wrote her a letter on the steamer somewhere off the east coast of Africa
in which the following paragraph occurred: "And if, Janet, you wish ever to
express the idea of sheer and utter ineffectiveness" (he had told her in the pre-
ceding sentence that some hens had broken from their coops on board) "think
of a flock of hens scratching for worms on the iron deck of a tramp steamer in
the Indian Ocean."

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

succeeded by his chief assistant, Dr. Watson E. Davis, another
scientific man who can write.

Even before the founding of Science Service, however, the
space devoted to scientific news in many journals increased
greatly and manuscripts were accepted from certain scientific
men who found that they could write. Many magazines fol-
lowed suit. And at the present time I think that science is
receiving nearly adequate attention at the hands of the press.
Some of us old timers, however, have a feeling that in certain
cases scientific workers of great promise, having found that they
can write acceptably and that they are well paid for doing so,
are in a way abandoning fields of research in which they could
do more permanent good.

Not only with the Science Service but also in other ways is
this press reporting of scientific matters becoming systematized.
For example, Mr. Austin H. Clark of the National Museum,
a man broadly trained, especially in biological science, has taken
on the duties of press secretary of the great old association. He
tells me that the newspapers are avid for good sound stuff.
Surely the average reader of newspapers has had no difficulty in
getting adequate ideas of the important features of all the recent
meetings. Even over here in Europe, where I am writing this
in the early spring of 1932, I have had no difficulty in following
the course of events at the January meeting of the Association
at New Orleans.

[168]

Chapter IX

B

'y the time I assumed the office of Chief of the Service in
June, 1894, it had become apparent to me that there had been
going on for a long time an interchange of injurious insects
between countries. Of course this was a perfectly unwitting
exchange and came about ignorantly in the course of inter-
national commerce. It was obvious to us that the United States
was one of the greatest sufferers in this way, although there had
been striking instances in European countries as well, at least
for a hundred years. As we have already shown, the Woolly
Root Louse of the apple, for example, appeared in England
in the seventeen hundreds, and became known as the American
Blight; and many years later, the Grapevine Phylloxera was
found to have been carried from North America to many
different parts of the world, and, in fact, brought about a strict
quarantine in many countries against American vines.

But the United States had done nothing, and in the meantime
rapidity in steamship transportation was increasing. As a result,
more and more insects were being brought in, and many of
them had become established.

It is worthy of note that the State of California passed a

[169]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

quarantine law as early as 1881, but the other States did nothing,
and the Federal Government took no action.

In 1895 I took as the subject of my address as retiring chair-
man of the Section of Zoology of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science "The Spread of Land Species by
the Agency of Man, with Especial Reference to Insects." I
brought together what seemed to me a rather impressive series
of facts and arguments. I had intended to go into the matter
more deeply than I did and to watch personally the arrival and
unloading of transatlantic steamers in order to investigate the
possibilities of the introduction of what might be termed "chance
passengers" in the way of insects other than those attached to,
or contained in, plants or plant products. I was unable to do
this, but I think the argument, as it stood, was almost as strong
as if I had done it.

About this time other State laws began to be passed, and these
laws were collected and published in successive bulletins by the
United States Department of Agriculture.

In 1895, in an address entitled "Injurious Insects and Com-
merce," delivered before the Peninsular Horticultural Society
at Dover, Delaware, I made a strong plea for the extension
of such legislation, calling it "the crying need of the present
time." And the following year I delivered a similar address
before the Massachusetts Horticultural Society at Boston.

In the meantime, I had begun a study of those pests to agri-
culture in various foreign countries, especially those that had
not yet made their appearance in the United States, but that
were likely to be introduced in the course of commerce and
were potentially extremely dangerous. In 1897, ^ used much of
the information thus gained in an article entitled "The Danger
of Importing Insect Pests," published in the Yearbook of the
United States Department of Agriculture.

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

At that time the orange-growers of CaHfornia were much
exercised over the possibiHty of the importation from Mexico
of a maggot that damaged oranges in the state of Morelos, the
exact Mexican distribution of which was not known. CaHfornia,
in fact, quarantined against all Mexican oranges. It was sus-
pected in some quarters that this quarantine was rather unjust,
and that it was passed very largely to avoid competition between
Mexican and Californian oranges, more especially since the
Mexican oranges came on the market earlier in the season than
the Californian ones. Since most Mexican oranges that had hith-
erto entered California came from the adjacent state of Sonora
in Mexico, I took my first Mexican trip in the autumn of 1898,
to find whether this particular insect really existed in that state.

It was a wonderful trip, and many funny things happened.
I had never been in Mexico before, and did not realize how very
peaceable it was under the somewhat autocratic administration
of President Diaz. So I took among my collecting supplies a very
serviceable revolver. I went down from Nogales to Hermosillo,
investigated the large citrus plantations there, and then went
on to Guaymas, on the shore of the Gulf of California. As I
wished to go into the interior and to investigate both citrus and
cotton, the Swiss proprietor of my hotel engaged a man with
an open carriage to take me out to San Jose de Guaymas. The
driver was a villainous-looking chap, pockmarked and with
slightly crossed eyes, and as I sat on the seat behind him I fur-
tively reached into my toilet bag, took out the revolver, and put
it into the side-pocket of my coat. At that time I knew only a
word or two of Spanish. After a bit I noticed some little donkeys
by the roadside, and said interrogatively to the driver, "Burros?"
To which he replied amiably, "Si, si." And then there was a
silence for a few moments. Then he turned his head and said
"Burros Americanos muy grande?" To which I replied, "Si, si."

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

Encouraged by my agreement, he said something else in Spanish
which I could not in the least understand, but to which I replied
wisely with, "Si, si." I was beginning to enjoy the conversation
and so I quoted to him the opening paragraphs of the Declara-
tion of Independence. He quite agreed, and was evidently in a
conversational mood, since he assented with a smile, "Si, si,"
and began a long monologue which, for all I knew, might have
been a chapter from "Don Quixote." By that time I was
ashamed of my revolver, so I took it out of my pocket and put
it back in my bag. It was a delightful conversation, but neither
of us understood a word the other one said, except the extremely
useful "Si, si."

Eventually we arrived at San Jose, and I was deposited with
a letter of introduction at the rancho of a man named Parodi.
Parodi was an Italian who had come out from Italy to British
Columbia, where he was engaged in mining until the climate
and the hardships drove him south, when he went to Mexico,
the land of the sun. He had picked up some French somewhere,
he knew Italian, of course, and had learned a little English in
British Columbia. That was the reason I had been sent to him.
He was a successful ranchero, had accumulated quite a large
property, and had gained the dictatorial, masterful way of ad-
dressing people common to men who associate with peons. I
remember that two or three times a day he would come out into
the field where I was watching insects and remark in a loud
voice, "Well, what you say?" And I would reply with an in- i
gratiating smile, "Anything you like." He always said then,
"Let's have a drink." If I agreed, as I generally did, he would ,

march majestically back to the rancho, with me following meekly
behind. When he reached the porch he would say, "Take a
seat," and then would enter the house and come back with a
big bottle and glasses and would say as solemnly as though it

[•72]

i

THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

were a religious rite, "All strong drinks is bad! But ze best of
zose strong drinks is mescal! Help yourself."

Parodi's versatility as a linguist was notably shown one night
at dinner when an interesting insect buzzed in and alighted on
the table. I reached for it, and Parodi warned me in three
languages spoken at once: "Gardezl gardez! zat animcdito sting
like ze dev." But it was too late. The insect was Rasahus higut-
tatiis (Comstock calls it the two-spotted Corsair) and my fore-
finger was badly punctured.

I found no Morelos orange worms in Sonora, and so notified
the California State government, but it had no effect on the
quarantine, although it did furnish an excuse for a trip to
Mexico by some of the State officials.

This was the first of a number of trips to Mexico, during
which I made the acquaintance of the late Alfredo Duges of
Guanajuato, and of my warm friend, Professor Alfonso Her-
rera.

May I tell a little yarn connected with one of these later
journeys? We were going south on the Mexican national line
from Juarez. In the carriage with me were Joseph Greusel, an
old newspaper man of Cleveland, Ohio (now dead), and a
younger Cleveland lawyer. They were going down to Oaxaca to
look after some mining interests. At a certain point the train
stopped for a little time, and there was some sort of a com-
motion outside. Greusel put his head out of the window and
said, "Hello, what's all this?" There was a fourth man in the
compartment, a young Mexican mining engineer who had
studied at Stanford University, and who therefore spoke rather
fair English. The Spaniard said, "Zis place is Hildalgo, where
Hildalgo, ze priest, sound ze tocsin of Mehican liberty in 1814,
and today is the Mehican Fourth of July. Ze young man at ze
head of ze procession is ze gran'son of Hildalgo." Greusel was

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

very much impressed, and said, "By George, how interesting
this is!" In the meantime the young Mexican engineer stepped
out on the back platform and said to the crowd in Spanish
that the man with his head out o£ the window was the grandson
of George Washington. Whereupon the crowd broke out with
lusty Vit/as, all directed at Greusel, who withdrew his head and
said to us, "This is one of the most interesting international
incidents I ever encountered. I must write it up for my home
paper." The Cleveland lawyer then remarked, "But, Joe, we
didn't see the whole show. We didn't see the grandmother of
Hildalgo." Joe said indignantly, "Are you pulling my leg? Are
you kidding me?" And the young Mexican engineer said joy-
ously, "Certainlee, Hildalgo, he was a priest, he was a celibate,
he could have no descendants." During the next few weeks
we met a number of English-speaking people who were mainly
American and English mining men, and I told this story several
times in Greusel's presence. Finally he said to me, "Doctor, that's
a darned good story, and you tell it well. But if you do it again,
I'll write it up for my paper and make you the butt of the joke."
Newspaper men can do pretty well as they please with us, after
all. They can, to a certain extent, make reputations and unmake
them.

Conditions in Mexico prior to 1904, under the regime of
Porfirio Diaz, were very stable, and it was a great pleasure to
travel in that beautiful country. I remember that once I called
on the governor of the state of Oaxaca and asked for informa-
tion about the cotton-growing regions in his state. He told me
that he would get the information for me in two or three days,
and that he advised me meantime to visit the ruins of Mitla,
some thirty miles from Oaxaca. He said that he would give
me a detachment of Rurales as an escort. I expostulated and told
him that conditions were so very peaceful that I would not need

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a military guard. He replied that although that was perfectly
true, I could use the soldiers to collect insects for me!

On another occasion I called on Dr. Eduardo Liceaga, the
president of the Superior Board of Health in the City of Mexico,
at a time when I wished to study the geographical distribution
of the Yellow Fever mosquito in Mexico. Dr. Liceaga had been
one of the first Mexicans to accept enthusiastically the findings
of the Walter Reed Commission concerning the transfer of
Yellow Fever by a certain species of mosquito. He told me with
much pride (this was in 1904) that he had organized the whole
republic in such a way that there was perfectly satisfactory mos-
quito inspection going on at all the principal points, and he
showed me a detailed list of inspectors on his pay-roll at each
place. I went gradually from the City of Mexico (eight thousand
feet elevation) down to the seaboard at Vera Cruz, stopping at
several points on the way, including Orizaba and Cordoba. At
each point I searched for Liceaga's inspectors, and at last in
Cordoba I found a lady who told me that she had seen a solitary
lazy Indian with a sign on his cap and a quart can of kerosene.
Evidently Liceaga's inspectors were drawing their pay from the
government, but it is doubtful if they did much work.

While at Cordoba, by the way, an American lady, Mrs. Mary
Knight Wood, a composer of charming songs, gave a little tea
party and invited a number of people who understood English.
Among them was a young girl of seventeen, a Mexican, who in
rather efficient but halting English said to me, "It must be very
embarrassing for you to see the monument in our principal
plaza." It was a monument erected to heroes who died in the
war of 1847 against the United States. I replied that it was a
beautiful monument, and that the sentiment was also beautiful,
but I asked why I should feel embarrassed. She replied that it
was because the Mexicans had won the war.

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS
"Why," I replied, "I thought that the United States won that

war."

"Oh, no," she said. "Our school histories all say that Mexico
won it."

This reminded me strongly of the collection of school books
published in the Southern States during our Civil War. I re-
member an arithmetic, for example, in which one of the prob-
lems was: "If one Southerner can whip seven Yankees, how
many Yankees can eleven Southerners whip?" And this, of
course, reminds me of the books on American history that were
published during my schoolboy days and the prejudices against
England that were built up in the minds of all the children in
the States by the lengthy accounts of the Revolutionary War.

My last trip to Mexico was in 1904. This was the journey on
which I was studying especially, perhaps, the geographical
distribution of the Yellow Fever mosquito, and at the end of the
investigation I learned that the dread disease had just broken
out at Laredo on the Rio Grande. I knew that the State of Texas
would be up in arms with a rigorous quarantine, including a
shotgun barrier along the river, and I had no wish to be held
in a detention camp. So I went to the office of the Morgan Line
Steamers in the City of Mexico to look for passage by steamer
from Vera Cruz to New York. I bought my ticket, and in pay-
ing for it brought out a United States government transporta-
tion request.

"Oh," said the clerk, "you are one of those government fellows.
One of them was in here a few weeks ago, bought a ticket on
one of those requests, and borrowed fifty dollars from me,
which he has never returned."

I overcame his scruples and got my ticket, and afterwards dis-
covered that the man who negotiated the loan was a member of

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the party that included Pothier and Beyer of New Orleans,
and that had been sent out to investigate the cause of Yellow
Fever. They were sent by the United States Public Health Serv-
ice, and it may be remembered that they reported that they had
discovered the causative organism. It may also be remembered
that a later party, headed by Rosenau, sent out by the same
service, decided that this organism was nothing but a yeast cell.

On the journey home our steamer towed a great barge from
Vera Cruz to Progresso, Yucatan, carrying some hundreds of
Yaqui Indian prisoners and their families, who had been con-
cerned in a rebellious uprising in Sonora and who had been con-
demned to labor in the hennequin plantations.

We also stopped in Havana Harbor. As I have said previously,
I was the only person allowed to go ashore, on account of the
Yellow Fever scare.

Since those days Mexico has had no end of trouble, and the
old peaceful times have often seemed far away. My friend,
Herrera, for example, has had tremendous ups and downs.
Under the Huerta regime he lost his post and much of his
private property and with his family started to flee for the coast.
But his train was attacked by revolutionaries, and, escaping
with difficulty, he reached Cordoba, to be attacked by brain-
fever. He remained for weeks in a hospital, but finally, with
his family, reached Vera Cruz, in a deplorable state of health
and in financial distress. This happened to be just at the time
of the American occupation of Vera Cruz during President
Wilson's early administration, and Herrera managed to get a
cable through to me, telling me of his location and condition.
General Funston was in command of the American Expedi-
tionary Forces then in occupation at Vera Cruz, and I cabled
him, telling him of Herrera and of the help he had been to the
United States government by his kindness to our experts. Gen-

FIGHTING THE INSECTS i

eral Funston at once sent aid from his Quartermaster's Depart-
ment. Eventually Herrera returned to Mexico City, and under
the following administration resumed his work and finally or-
ganized a Department of Biological Studies.

Years later destructive locusts invaded some of the south-
eastern states of Mexico and played havoc with the crops. A
competent German, Dr. Alfonso Dampf, who had done work in
the tropics, was engaged to investigate this matter, and eventu-
ally was made Chief of the Department of Research and Pest
Control in the Federal Office of Agricultural Defense.

In spite of Mexican internal troubles, experts from the United
States have been sent down there on entomological problems,
and some have been stationed there for a long time. I remember
that at one time we had a laboratory in the so-called Lagunas
district, and a cheerful photograph that one of the men sent
me showed the body of a revolutionista hanging from a tree
immediately in front of the laboratory entrance. Under the pres-
ent government (this is written in 1931) cooperative work is
being carried on in a mutually helpful and very cordial way be-
tween Mexico and the United States. A competent laboratory
has been furnished by the Mexican government in the federal
district and it is manned by American experts. Its purpose is
largely to study the so-called "fruit flies," and its necessity is
emphasized by a serious outbreak of one of these flies in the new
citrus orchards on the Texas side of the Rio Grande, and by
the remarkable outbreak of the Mediterranean Fruit Fly in
Florida in the late winter and spring of 1929.

Mexico is a wonderful country, and she has had some wonder-
ful men. I remember Sefior Limantour when he was Secretario
de Fomento, a cultivated, broad-minded statesman of whom any
country might be proud. And I remember my friends among

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the scientific men. Undoubtedly Mexico has a great future; but
when ?

In those days the United States was fairly well protected
against injurious insects from the Orient by the State inspection
services on the Pacific coast. But the Adantic coast was more
dangerous on account of the greater rapidity of steamship
service from Europe. For many years — in fact, from 1898 to
1912— concerted efforts were being made to pass a satisfactory
plant quarantine act by the federal government that should
measurably protect the whole country. Many hearings were
held before congressional committees and several bills were
prepared. All of them met the strenuous opposition of the
National Nurserymen's Association through its committee on
legislation. Finally, in early 1912, despairing of success in our
own country, I went to Europe to try to get certain European
governments to strengthen their own plant inspection laws,
and to secure in this way a competent system of inspection of
and certification of plants and plant products going to America.
I interviewed high officials in England, France, Belgium, Hol-
land and Germany with a fair degree of success. I met with
fair promises and great courtesy everywhere, and in some cases
the inspection services were strengthened. I remember suggest-
ing to M. Vassiliere that it might be a good plan to station
American inspectors at some important points, like Angers,
for example, and he replied that that was entirely out of the
question, since it would create a bad diplomatic precedent. Later
I remember that at a hearing before the United States House
Committee of Agriculture the same suggestion was made by
Mr. Lever of South Carolina, at that time Chairman of the
committee. I told him M. Vassiliere's comment, and he at once
acknowledged its force.

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

After all my hard work with these officials in Europe dur-
ing June and July of 1912, I received, early in August, in
London, a cablegram from the Hon. James Wilson, then United
States Secretary of Agriculture, stating that a competent quar-
antine bill had just passed Congress and had been signed by
the President. Thus my summer's work had been entirely
unnecessary, although my interviews with different people had
been extremely interesting, and of much educational value.

The individual credit for this legislation on the part of the
United States is due almost wholly to my then first-assistant and
ultimate successor in office, Dr. C. L. Marlatt, who was promptly
made the chairman of the Federal Horticultural Board, and
who administered its affairs with great tact and firmness.

All this is a legitimate part of the story of an entomologist,
although, as a matter of fact, all of these quarantine efforts
were directed not only against injurious insects but against
plant diseases. Before leaving this subject, it may be well to
mention briefly the International Conference of Economic En-
tomologists and Phytopathologists, held in Wageningen in Hol-
land in 1923. I strongly suspect that this conference was called
by the Dutch people for the purpose of strengthening the inter-
national feeling on the subject of the so-called Quarantine No.
37, then recendy promulgated by the United States government.
This restricted the importation into the United States of all
bulbs, except under certain conditions, and I am inclined to
think that I was selected as Honorary Chairman of the Con-
ference with the idea that I might be brought to favor its aim.
But this of course may not have been the case. The conference !|

was largely attended by men from different countries, and there
was a strong delegation of Americans, none of them, however,
connected in any way with the Federal Horticultural Board.
There were visits to large bulb-growing districts, and luncheons

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and dinners presided over by the Burgomasters of different
towns, and everywhere the injustice of the American ruHng
was pointed out and insisted upon. Any danger from the im-
portation of Holland products was declared to be absolutely
non-existent. It was a very interesting situation for the Ameri-
can delegates. We could sympathize with the Hollanders and
declare regretfully that we had nothing to do with the ruling
and could not influence the Board. But I shall tell all about
this conference in the next chapter.

The Wageningen conference did much good, even though it
had no effect upon the United States Quarantine No. 37. It
brought the scientific men of the different countries together,
made new and lasting friendships, and started, internationally,
a cooperation between the plant disease men and the agricultural
entomologists that is bound to become closer and closer.

Ever since 1912 the Plant Quarantine Service has operated
very successfully in the United States and has received in-
creasing Federal appropriations for its support. I think we may
all be thankful that it was started. At one time it was thought
that appropriate inspection work for dangerous insects could
be performxcd under the Bureau of Entomology, and for plant
diseases under the Bureau of Plant Industry. But such an ar-
rangement would have complicated greatly the work of those
two organizations. I mentioned increasing appropriations just
now. It should not be forgotten that a few years ago Con-
gress with the acquiescence, but rather against the advice, of
the experts, appropriated the huge sum of ten millions of
dollars, to be expended in an effort to check the spread of the
European Corn Borer. And none of us will forget the speedy
appropriation of over four millions of dollars in the spring of
1930, for the purpose of wiping out the Mediterranean Fruit

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

Fly in Florida. Both of these appropriations were expended
largely by the Plant Quarantine Service.

Of course the Bureau of Entomology and the Bureau of
Plant Industry cooperate loyally and cheerfully with the Plant
Quarantine Service, many of the experts in these bureaus con-
stantly being called upon for advice. Naturally, moreover, a few
experts in entomology and plant disease are officially connected
with the Quarantine Service. Dr. Marlatt, the first Chief of
the Service held, at the same time, the post of associate chief
of the Bureau of Entomology. When I retired, in 1927, he
became Chief of the Bureau. The problem of choosing a new
chief for the Quarantine Service was a serious one and took
many months of careful consideration. Finally Mr. Lee Strong,
who for a number of years had been connected with the Cali-
fornia Quarantine Service, was given the post, and he has
directed the work admirably.

The comparatively new plant quarantine has created many
disturbances and has caused much opposition in some quarters.
I wonder if its principal officials have not passed many sleepless
nights. Some of its important and quite necessary decisions
have almost disturbed diplomatic relations. Surely they have
caused changes in commerce and in industry! Experienced
bulb-growers from the old countries, for example, have come
to America and have started enterprises of their own in the
United States. And our country is growing an infinitely greater
number of plants than heretofore in her commercial nurseries.

There are many annoying problems that come up all the
while. I ran into one of them accidentally after I had retired
from office. I happened to be in Seattle, Washington, at the
time, and the inspectors at that port were so worried about
a question that had arisen that they consulted me. I am telling
this story simply to indicate the worries that these people have

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all the time. A serious enemy to growing rice in the Orient
is the Rice Stem Borer {Chilo oryzceellns). These Seattle in-
spectors showed me a lot of cheap toys that were coming in
from Japan and that were intended for the Woolworth Ten
Cent Stores. They were addressed to many parts of the United
States and were all packed in rice straw. On opening some
of these straws they found the larvae of this destructive pest
alive and healthy. What was to be done? Rice straw was
probably the only cheap packing that the Japanese had. The
articles in which it was packed were so cheap that the expense
of fumigation or other treatment was not to be considered.
And yet they were to go almost everywhere in our country.
Rice culture has extended enormously in the United States,
possibly principally upland rice in east Texas and in the Sacra-
mento Valley in California. The demand for rice has increased,
and the sea islands on the coast of South Carolina and Georgia
can no longer supply it. Moreover, the Rice Borer will probably
attack other large-stemmed graminaceous plants. What a prob-
lem! I don't know how the Plant Quarantine Service has solved
it. Possibly this new pest has already got a foothold in the
States, but if so, I have not heard that it has been discovered.
Great credit not only for the operations of the Board for
many years, but for the passage of the law, belongs to Dr.
Marlatt; but I like to think of what I did in the early days
to help bring about a popular sentiment. The whole history,
I think, comes quite properly into the story of an entomologist.

[183]

chapter X

i

N.

1 EARLY everybody believes theoretically in Internationalism,
and there is no movement that leads toward international under-
standing more than the tendency to hold international meetings
and conventions on all sorts of topics. I once wrote an address
on the evolution o£ Internationalism, but I shall tell about that
later.

It is true that the big international gatherings of representa-
tives of different nations brought together for political pur-
poses are likely to break up in an indecisive way. But the
smaller gatherings of people interested in some special line of
endeavor bring about personal friendships among people of
different countries, expose a community of ideas that are ex-
tremely enlightening, and promote an international understand-
ing the extent of which can hardly be realized.

I have been lucky enough to attend a number of these gath-
erings, and I am sure that the work of the Federal Bureau with
which I have been officially connected has been greatly helped
by the contacts made. I am sure also that the same thing holds
for organizations from other nations whose representatives have
come together in this way.

The first international gathering of the kind that I ever

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

attended was in St. Louis in 1904. The managers of the World
Exposition held that year in that city had arranged for an
international congress of arts and sciences, and had not only
sent certain distinguished men to Europe to carry personal invi-
tations to well-known men over there to come to the congress
and read papers, but reinforced the invitation by the information
that all their travelling expenses would be paid. It was a big
gathering. Many of the world leaders in things intellectual
were there, and there was a notable series of addresses. There
were also many important receptions, dinners, and affairs of
that kind.

The organization of the congress into sections had already
been arranged, and the programs had been practically made
out, when some one suggested that it might be desirable to have
an executive secretary to attend to such matters as the arrange-
ment and assignment of meeting halls, registration and all
other deails. I was appointed to this post only thirty days before
the opening of the congress, and reached St. Louis ten days
before the meeting began. I had great difficulty in finding the
requisite number of meeting halls, and many other details
were very puzzling; but as I had for some years been perma-
nent secretary of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science, the experience was there, and things probably went
better than they would have if a person unaccustomed to such
affairs had had charge.

Professor Simon Newcomb was the president, and, naturally,
the majority of the speakers were drawn from the faculties
of the leading American universities.

There was a bit of quiet rivalry among some of these institu-
tions, notably between Columbia and Harvard, concerning the
number of men selected from each institution. St. Louis was
crowded at that time, the Exposition was in full swing, and

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

the details of travelling in the United States were new to the
European guests. Many difficult situations had to be straightened
out. On the very valuable suggestion made, I think, by Hugo
Miinsterberg, six young American Doctors o£ Philosophy, fa-
miliar with certain European languages, were appointed to
assist the executive secretary, especially by way of concerning
themselves with the comfort of the European delegates. One
of the difficulties that we encountered was a most unfortunate
glut of luggage. Many of the Europeans, unfamiliar with our
checking system, were greatly worried when they were not
able instantly to reclaim their trunks, and so on. I remember
one German professor who wailed in despair for two days
because the box that contained the manuscript of his speech
had not arrived.

An interesting incident was connected with the arrival of
Henri Poincare, the famous French mathematician. He made
his first appearance at the registration office early one morning.
I was not there, but an assistant was at the registration desk
and he told me the story. Poincare knew no English, and this
particular assistant did not understand French, so they were
apparently at a deadlock. But the Frenchman said in his own
lano-uage that he had been invited by Professor Newcomb. The
assistant caught the name, and by signs indicated that he would
conduct the visitor to Professor Newcomb's room. They went
to the dormitory where Newcomb was quartered and rapped
on his door. A voice sang out, "Come in." The assistant opened
the door and discovered the Washington astronomer in his
bathrobe and wearing a most forbidding expression (with his
leonine head and shaggy hair and beard he could seem most
formidable). Poincare advanced at once with hand extended
and said, "Oh, Professeur Newcomb!" Then, seeing that he

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

was not immediately recognized, added, "Je suis PoincarS. Vous
vous rappellez que vous in'avez invite personellement."

"Why," said Newcomb, somewhat staggered and for the mo-
ment forgetting himself, "you said you couldn't come." Then,
recovering himself, he smiled broadly and went on, "]e suis
enchante — " etc., etc.

When Newcomb died some years later in Washington his
friends held a memorial meeting, and I was one of the speakers.
As was quite proper, the other speakers were solemn on the
whole, but I permitted myself to tell the story I have just
related. Mrs. Newcomb and her daughters were there, and
I had some doubt as to how they would receive it. But they
said that they were very pleased, and Mr. James Bryce, who
was one of the other speakers, told me that he thought the
incident was characteristic of Newcomb.

After Newcomb retired from the Naval Observatory, he took
his luncheons regularly at the Cosmos Club, and he sat by
preference, not with the scientific men, but with a group of
architects. He told me that he thought architects v/ere the most
congenial people in the world. That to me was a new light on
the great man's character.

The proceedings and transactions of this St. Louis Congress
were published in a series of volumes that constitute a great
record.

In 1907, the Seventh International Congress of Zoology was
held at Boston, Massachusetts, under the presidency of Charles
Sedgwick Minot, the distinguished comparative anatomist and
embryologist of the Harvard Medical College. It is not my
intention to write about the proceedings of this congress or
of any of the other meetings of this kind that I attended. At
least, I shall not write about them in a serious way. But in some

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

o£ the stories that I expect to tell, one may perhaps gain a
slight idea o£ the effect of the coming-together of men of similar
aims but of different home surroundings and methods of
training. It is quite natural that the humorous incidents should
stick more closely to my memory.

At Boston, the European countries were well represented.
Many of the most prominent zoologists in the world were there,
and many matters of interest to the students of animal life
were discussed. I went on from Washington and read the first
paper in the section of Economic Zoology. I recall with especial
pleasure that Vernon Kellogg, then of Stanford University,
came to me after I had finished my discourse, his eyes shining
with enthusiasm, and told me that my paper had made him
regret extremely that he had not gone into the economic side
of entomology, instead of interesting himself almost exclusively
in the study and teaching of other aspects. I don't think that
either of us at that time fully realized that the fundamental
studies in which he had been engaged were basically of great
importance from the point of view of applied science.

During the Boston meeting, the president, Dr. Minot, gave
a dinner to twenty-five or thirty of us at the Saint Botolph
Club on Newbury Street. It was a characteristically international
dinner, and in welcoming us after the coffee Minot spoke in
English, in German, in French, and finally, I think, in Italian.
Admirable speeches were made by R. Blanchard of Paris and
Professor Hubrecht of Holland. And then Minot called upon
a well-known German professor. This was long before the
days of Prohibition, and the wine had been circulating freely.
When the German was called upon by name to say some-
thing, he did not rise, but said rather grumpily, "Wie \ann man
sprechen wenn es nichts zu trin\en gibst?" Minot blushed,

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

touched the electric bell and ordered another case o£ cham-
pagne.

After the Boston meeting the congress visited New York
and Washington. At the former city, there was a reception at
the American Museum of Natural History. The director of the
Museum stood at the beginning of the receiving line, with his
charming wife next to him. As the visitors advanced in line
one by one, he shook each cordially by the hand and presented
him to his wife, and so they passed down the receiving party.
This same German professor of whom we have spoken (and
he knew no English) had noticed that the men ahead of him
had announced their names, so when he reached the director,
he said, "Heise Schmidt" (Schmidt wasn't his name, but it
will answer for this yarn).

"Ah," said the director, "Professor Heise Schmidt, allow me
to present you-

Here the German interrupted him impatiendy by saying,
"Nur Schmidt."

"Oh," said the American. "I beg your pardon. Professor Nur
Schmidt "

When the Congress visited Washington we gave them a
number of interesting receptions, one at the Cosmos Club,
one at the Zoological Park, one at the Smithsonian Institution,
and a final one at the Congressional Library. As Chairman of
the local committee, I presided at the meeting held at the
Cosmos Club and introduced the Hon. H. L. West, then Com-
missioner of the District of Columbia, who made a capital
welcoming speech on behalf of the District, and the Hon.
James Wilson, the only member of the Cabinet at that time
in Washington (it was then in late August) to welcome the
Congress on the part of the Federal Government. Secretary
Wilson made his usual good speech, and then Professor Blan-

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

chard of Paris responded on behalf of the delegates. Blanchard
was especially eloquent, but he used the French language (he
knew a little English at that time but did not trust himself).
In the course of this delightful talk he complimented Secretary
Wilson highly and spoke especially of the very liberal policy
of the United States Department of Agriculture in sending out
its valuable scientific publications to all the countries of the world.
These remarks were delivered so impressively and so beautifully
that they were followed by vigorous applause, in which Secre-
tary Wilson joined heartily. '
A day or so afterwards I called at Secretary Wilson's office '^
on a matter of business, and he said to me, "Doctor, that French
professor was a real orator, wasn't he? I was greatly taken by
his eloquence, although I couldn't understand a word he said.
But I was carried away and applauded with the rest, and then
it dawned upon me that he must have been saying very nice
things about me, and that I had hardly done the right thing
in applauding. It reminded me of Blind Tom, the wonderful
negro pianist, who, at a concert, always applauded himself
vigorously."

I think it was in that same year, 1907, that an International
Congress of Agriculture was held in Vienna. I had been out
in Russia and had come back from the Crimea by a Black
Sea boat to Constantinople, and thence up to Budapest, where
I left my courier and friend, Pichler, of the Hotel Hungaria,
and then came on to Vienna and the Congress. I went to the
Hotel Bristol and found my old guide, the then well-known
courier, Carl Binder, who arranged matters for me with the
local committee of the Congress. Of all the functions of the
sort that I have ever attended, this one was possibly the most
perfect. The local committee in charge of the arrangements

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

had done almost, i£ not quite, the best work of any organization
of this kind I ever knew. There were all sorts of receptions,
and many delightful mementoes of Vienna were given to
delegates. The expense of the entertainment of the Congress
must have been very great. The final dinner in the Burgo-
meister's Saale was incomparably admirable. To one from the
United States, however, the most striking feature of the Con-
gress was the evening reception at the Palace. Such an array
of spectacular uniforms and decorations and women's costumes
and jewels I had never imagined. But I was disappointed in
Franz Josef. From his published photographs, I had pictured
him as a man of heroic proportions and military bearing — an
ideal emperor. When I saw the small, bent, senile person that
he was at that time, I began to appreciate what has come to be
known as the pathos of his reign.

I recall with especial interest one incident of this Congress.
The Association of Bird Lovers of Austria had been allowed
a special session of one of the sections of the Congress, for the
discussion of the question of bird protection. Since it was an
Agricultural Congress, it was obvious that the discussion would
take the form of a strong advocacy of bird protection as an
aid to agriculture. This happened to be a subject in which I
had taken an especial interest. I had supported Antonio Berlese
in his Italian work, and from my studies of the insect parasites
of injurious species in the United States, I had come to the
conclusion that by far the most important enemies of injurious
insects are other insects. Considering the fact that birds feed
rather indifferently upon various kinds of insects, I had even
gone so far in my mind as to think that if the entire race of
insectivorous birds were wiped out by some catastrophe, the
balance of Nature would not be long upset. I have always

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rather regretted this conclusion on account of what must, after
all, be a sentimental interest in birds.

So I attended this particular seance. When I entered the room
I found that my old friend, Professor J. Ritsema-Bos of Hol-
land, was in the chair. The speakers in support of the birds
were mostly pastors, I was told. The discussion was entirely in
the German language. At the conclusion of a speech by one of
these pastors, Ritsema-Bos said that in the United States much
attention had been given to this question by a skilled scientific
organization. Then he announced that I was present and in-
vited me to say something on the subject. I protested that my
faulty German would not allow me to express myself clearly
and forcibly. Whereupon Dr. Max Hollrung of Halle, the
well-known Nematologist, sprang to his feet and offered to
interpret if I would speak in English. This I did. I argued
that it was most unscientific and very unsatisfactory to speak
of the food habits of birds in a general way simply from more
or less casual observation, and that before any conclusions were
reached it would be necessary to study the stomach contents
of thousands of birds of different species. I said that such an
investigation had been begun by the Bureau of Biological
Survey of the United States Department of Agriculture, that
already some thousands of these stomachs, collected at different
seasons of the year, had been examined, and that already we
had scientifically accurate information of the food habits of a
number of our birds. These remarks were naturally received
with silence, since very few who were there had understood
what I said. But when my friend had put it into German there
was strong applause, and the resolution under discussion was
defeated or tabled or modified — I have forgotten which.

Although there were many fine men at this Congress, and
there began for me there a number of friendships that became

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lasting, I was perhaps more particularly impressed by the per-
sonality of M. de Meline, former Minister of Agriculture of
France. He was one of the most delightful men I have ever
met, charmingly courteous, quick of wit, a wonderful speaker
and apparently a thorough internationalist. He was at that
time the president of the International Commission for Agri-
culture, and he held that position until the time of his death,
many years later. The function of this commission was to
arrange for the International Congresses of Agriculture held
in different countries at intervals of three years, to prepare
the programs, and in occasional intervening meetings at Paris
to look over agricultural conditions for the whole world and
thus to decide upon the questions to be discussed seriously at
the congresses. Many of the functions of this commission,
especially its broader ones, were afterwards assumed by the
International Institute of Agriculture, which was founded with
headquarters at Rome. The commission really acted as a per-
manent executive committee of the International Congresses.

This commission had apparently held a meeting before the
final dinner of the Congress, and in the enthusiastic good fel-
lowship coming with the breaking-up of the dinner, M. de
Meline shook me warmly by the hand and told me that I had
been elected the American member of the Commission. I have
held this membership ever since, and have occasionally attended
the meetings of the commission in Paris, which have always
been held impressively in the great hall of the Academic d'Agri-
culture in the Rue de Belle Chasse. Incidentally, it may be stated
that after the death of M. de Meline he was succeeded by the
Marquis de Vogue, who still presides. One of the most charming
and remarkable personalities I used to meet at these meetings,
a man of whom I was particularly fond, was M. Tisserand,

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another former Minister of Agriculture, and one of the grand
old leaders of French farming interests.

In 1908 the English men of science arranged a great celebra-
tion of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Charles
Darwin. In the spring of that year I was appointed a delegate
to this celebration from the Washington Academy of Sciences
and soon afterwards left for an official journey that took me
into Eastern Europe. In Budapest I was asked by my old
friend, Geza Horvath, whether I expected to attend the Fete
Lamarck in Paris in June. I had not heard of the fete,
but was told that the French, on learning of the English plan
to celebrate the Centenary of the birth of Darwin, had decided
to anticipate it by a great Lamarck celebration. Lamarckian
views of evolution were then being actively discussed, following
the publication of August Weissman's work, denying the possi-
bility of the inheritance of acquired characteristics.

This was an opportunity not to be lost, and I immediately
wrote to Paris, proposing myself as a delegate of Washington
organizations, and at the same time wrote to Washington for
confirmation. So that summer I attended both of the big inter-
national scientific meetings.

The Paris celebration was impressive as well as charming. At
the great opening meeting held in the Jardin des Plantes, in
a large temporary structure facing the beautiful Lamarck statue,
the President of the Republic, M. Faillieres, was present, with
that impressive personality, M. Leon Bourgeois, who at that time,
I think, was Minister of Foreign Affairs, also in attendance.
The principal address was effectively delivered by Edmond
Perrier, at that time Director of the Museum of Natural History
and a leader of the French Lamarckian School.

A number of distinguished Frenchmen received the foreign

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delegates and showed them to their reserved seats at this
function, and I recall that no less a person than Kiinckel d'Her-
culais did this for me. This leads me to a story. Many years
earlier, this famous French scientist had charge of certain
governmental investigations of locust outbreaks in Algeria.
Suddenly one day the press dispatches in the newspapers fairly
shrieked with a dramatic account of his death. It was stated
that he had been overwhelmed by a cloud of locusts, and that
the voracious creatures had completely devoured him, leaving
only a part of a red necktie, by which his fate was realized.
This announcement caused a great sensation, and scientific
associations all over the world passed resolutions of regret.
Biographical notices were printed in many languages. I recall
that this was done at Washington, and that a speech commemo-
rative of the supposed deceased was made by C. V. Riley, who
had known him well.

It turned out, however, that the notices in the newspapers
had been simply an instance of mendacious and sensational
journalism. Many years later, at a dinner that the late Alfred
Giard gave me, Kiinckel d'Herculais was present. After the
coffee was served, Giard in his delightful way said, "Kiinckel,
tell us about the time you were eaten up by locusts." The latter
grinned and said, "While I am sorry on some counts that I
can't tell you that, I can tell you of my great joy in reading,
after I returned to Paris, the extremely laudatory sketches of
my life."

At the Boston meeting the year before, it was decided to
hold the next Zoological Congress at Gratz. Professor von Graff
of that city, who was present at Boston, had been made Presi-
dent. Now, in Paris, at the Lamarck fete, there was a formal
luncheon that was largely attended by prominent Frenchmen

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as well as by the foreign delegates. I was invited to sit at the
head table, but declined, wishing to sit by my friend, Dr. Paul
Marchal, in a less conspicuous seat. When the tables were filled,
I noticed at the head table a man whose face was very familiar,
but whom I could not place. I asked Marchal who he was, but
he could not tell me, so I turned to the strange Frenchman
on my right and said to him in French, "Can you tell me the
name of the man at the head table between Perrier and
Blanchard?"

"Oui," he replied, "c'est evidemment M. Hovard de Wash-
ington."

I was of course in a position to assure him that he was mis-
taken. And there the matter rested until a month later, at
Cambridge, I met Dr. von GrafI one night at Sir Arthur
Shipley's chambers. I recognized von Graff at once as the man
I had puzzled about in Paris, and told him the story. His
reply was characteristic and pleased me greatly. He said, "Veil,
vy not? Ve are de same age, ve are de same size and wir sind
beide lustige Manner."

The next month the celebration of the birth of Charles
Darwin was held in Cambridge, England. It was enthusiastically
described in many publications at the time. I not only enjoyed
it thoroughly, but I was greatly impressed by the genius of the
English in arranging functions of that sort. Delegates came from
all over the world. Darwin's sons and their families were pres-
ent, and there were receptions and garden parties and many
notable speeches. I was quartered in Christ College, on a
corridor immediately opposite the chambers occupied by Darwin
himself when he was an undergraduate. And I ate at the
Commons. Thus, surrounded by the English University atmos-
phere, the American delegates of my generation were enor-

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mously impressed. It is not generally understood in England
that we Americans, who have been educated in general along
English lines and who have read literally hundreds of English
books, know England and its institutions very well indeed,
even without ever having set foot in the country. And for a
college-reared man to find himself in the midst of surround-
ings that he has formerly visualized in his imagination was a
wonderful experience. I carried away many enduring impres-
sions.

But these impressions, wonderful as they were, had Httle to
do with entomology. The great Cambridge entomologist. Dr.
David Sharp, reverenced by his fellow workers all over the
world, was not in evidence. However, I had not gone to the
celebration with any idea of adding to my entomological knowl-
edge, although Charles Darwin himself, broad naturalist that
he was, knew a lot about insects. In his youth he had been
especially interested in beetles.

At this celebration I saw Dr. Arthur Shipley, whom I had
met previously at the Cosmos Club in Washington. By 1908
he had become a person of much importance. He was very
proud of his standing in America and of the fact that Princeton
University had given him an honorary doctorate. At the time
of the Darwin Celebration he was already Master of Christ
College. He v/as a rather convivial man, had stunning chambers
and entertained every night after the other functions. I remem-
ber that von Graff, looking around him at Shipley's one night,
said, "Shipley, I now understand why you have never married.
It is these wonderful chambers."

This is hardly the place for an eulogium of Shipley, but this
mention of him brings up a host of charming memories. He
had collaborated with George H. F. Nuttall in a study of
malaria and the malarial mosquitoes in England, and was a

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very well-known parasitologist. He was a man of infinite
humor and of very broad reading and general culture. His
books and magazine articles are full of delightful tales. I have
elsewhere^ quoted some lines that he wrote me on the back
of an invitation he once sent me to dine with him at his club
in London, and they are worth repeating. He said, "You may
not have heard that the hookworm has recently been found in
Cornwall. This suggests the following lines:

If Cornish saints worked miracles.

The Bishop of this Diocese
Would quickly rid the Cornish mines

Of Ankylostomyiasis.

The last time I saw dear old Shipley was after he had been
knighted and had been sent during the World War to the
United States as the head of a British commission, the purpose
of which, as I understand it, was to give Americans a more
accurate view of conditions and to hasten the entrance of the
United States into the conflict. Although his health was poor,
he made some capital speeches (I heard one of them at the
New Willard Hotel). He died not long afterward.

In July, 1912, the Royal Society of London celebrated its two
hundred and fiftieth anniversary, and invited the principal
universities and scientific organizations of the world to send
delegates. By great good fortune, I was appointed the delegate
of the Washington Academy of Sciences. There were about
three hundred foreign delegates in attendance, twenty-four of
whom came from the United States.

The Royal Society of London is the oldest scientific society

^History of Applied Entomology, p. 485 (Smithsonian Pub.).

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in Great Britain, and one of the oldest in the world. On Mon-
day night, July 15, 1912, exactly two hundred and fifty years
from the date of the passage of the Charter by the Great Seal,
Burlington House in Piccadilly, famous during the previous
sixty-five years for the notable social and scientific functions of
the Society, was brilliantly illuminated, and the delegates there
assembled, many of them just from their steamers and trains,
for the purpose of registration and for informal meeting and
renewal of acquaintance.

The first formal function took place the next morning, on
Thursday the sixteenth, at Westminster Abbey. The heat of
the day was excessive. It would have been bad even in Wash-
ington, and in London it was overpowering. The majority of
the delegates wore academic dress, and the service was attended
by many distinguished Englishmen high in rank or in political
service. One of the naves of the cathedral was reserved for
delegates, the remainder of the space being filled by London
Society. Addison's superb hymn, "The Spacious Firmament on
High," was sung by the choir. While this hymn was un-
doubtedly appropriate to the occasion, I think most of the
American delegates smiled when the words were chanted:

Th' unwearied sun from day to day

Does his Creator's power display.
And publishes to every land

The work of an Almighty Hand.

The service was impressive, and most significant was the
short address of the Dean of Westminster, based on the pas-
sage, "But Truth abideth and is strong forever." He recalled
the perturbation that was wont to take possession of men's
minds during the last century with regard to discoveries made
in natural science — perturbation which sometimes betrayed it-

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self in fear, impatience and indignation. But these times were
now changed, and he thought that he might claim to speak in
the name of the whole world of Christian thought when he
gave expression to the gratitude that, as a rule, the clergy has
litde or no opportunity for offering, to the amazing enrichment
of human thought which had resulted from patient researches
into natural science during the past two hundred and fifty
years, and in particular in the past eighty years. He thanked
God in their name, for the great and glorious work that had
been done by men of science, for the widening of human
thought. With all humility, he expressed their grateful ac-
knowledgment for the benefits which had been rendered in
Great Britain by the Royal Society.

In the afternoon of Tuesday, delegates were received in the
great library of the Royal Society, Burlington House. Sir Archi-
bald Geikie, the president, was accompanied by Lord Rayleigh,
vice-president, and the officers. Most of the delegates wore
official robes or academic dress. Among the doctors' gowns
were prominent the crimson and gold cloaks of some of the
German professors, the scarlet and gold uniform, with brown
fur cloak, of an Hungarian delegate, the inconspicuous but
rather bizarre olive green uniform of members of the French
Academy, and the silk robes and turbans of the Indian repre-
sentatives. The heat again was almost overpowering, and al-
though the room is called "The Great Library," the delegates
were so closely crowded that it required the intense interest of
the function to overcome the feeling of personal discomfort.

Elaborately prepared and beautifully bound credentials were
presented in order by the delegates of the countries represented.

I remember now with especial interest that when Germany
was called, twelve men of academic appearance marched down
the central aisle, followed by workmen carrying a great bronze

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plaque to be inserted in the wall of Burlington House. The
inscription bore testimony not only to the great admiration o£
German men of science for English men of science, but of
Germany for England, and stated further that nothing could
ever disturb their most friendly relations. This was only two
years before the outbreak of the World War. It is a curious
fact that the famous "Manifesto of the Intellectuals," which
was sent out by German professors in the autumn of 1914, and
which insisted that Germany was attacked on all sides and was
only defending herself, was signed by every one of the twelve
German delegates to the Royal Society Celebration of 1912. I
received one of these manifestos from a German colleague, and
am keeping it largely in memory of this incident.

The galleries of the great hall were filled with beautiful
English women in colorful summer costume, and the whole
scene was of the greatest charm. Although I am writing this
in Paris in 1932, I can see it before my eyes as though it were
yesterday.

On Tuesday night a banquet took place at the Guild Hall.
The delegates were all present, as well as hundreds of men
prominent in most walks of life in England. Whenever one
glanced around the assemblage, his eye fell upon some man
of world-wide fame. At the conclusion of the dinner there was
an extraordinary list of toasts. I was impressed again by the
different significance of the word toastmaster in England. In
the United States the toastmaster is an important functionary.
He may be very good, but usually he is very bad. He is often
too long-winded, and we have all known him to make the
speech which we expected from the speaker on whom he was
calling. In England, however, the toastmaster is literally an
announcer of toasts. In other words, the business of the toast-
master is simply to toastmaster. On this occasion he was a

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very large man with a very large voice, who at the request
of the presiding officer, announced in stentorian tones the toasts
that were to be drunk, always beginning "My Lords and
gentlemen."

A notable speech was that of Mr. Asquith, then Prime Min-
ister of England. It was historical in large part. One sentence
which aroused laughter was as follows: "When the universities
were engrossed in the din of civil war, 'to the neglect,' as a
contemporary writer says, 'of academical studies,' science and
philosophy took refuge in the comparative peace and tran-
quillity which the streets of the city of London could then
afford." Another pleasantry of the Prime Minister's was as
follows: "In the same role with John Dryden is one of the chief
victims of his satire, George Villiers, Earl of Buckingham, who,
amid his various qualifications for the chief office of state, was,
as you know, 'chemist, fiddler, statesman and buffoon,' and I
see from your records that history tells us that when this, per-
haps the most original of the original Fellows of the Royal
Society, was committed to the Tower, a special laboratory was
fitted up for him in order that he might practise chemistry,
and, according to Bishop Burnet, he was very successful in
discovering the Philosopher's Stone — an illustration which sug-
gests that some people might be more profitably employed at
present than in either Westminster or Whitehall."

Characteristic of the address of the Prime Minister was the
frank acknowledgment of the benefits derived by government
from the work of men of science. He said very gracefully that
the administration of the grants of the Royal Society is not so
much a benefit conferred on the Society by the State as a
service rendered to the State by the Society.

The distinguished scholar and eminent politician, Lord Mor-
ley, gave a most scholarly and able speech after proposing a

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toast to universities at home and abroad. I was also greatly
impressed with a speech made by Mr. Balfour, and by the talk
given by the Archbishop of Canterbury. I have forgotten the
subject of Mr. Balfour's toast, but that of the Archbishop was
"The Learned Societies in the Old and New World." He
was delighted that this toast had been entrusted to an ecclesi-
astic. He called his hearers' attention to the fact that Smith-
field and St. Paul's Cross were very near to the Guildhall, and
he remembered to have heard that there was once a great gather-
ing of orthodox ecclesiastics under that roof, or the one that
preceded it, together with certain adventurous students of
science, who might have been on their way to Smithfield that
the one group might see the other suffer.

There were many other striking functions. The Duke and
Duchess of Northumberland gave a garden party at Syon
House, and one of the famous conversazioni of the Society
took place at Burlington House. But probably the most striking
of them all was a garden party at Windsor Castle, where the
members of the Society and the delegates were received by
Their Majesties, the King and Queen. The delegates were
grouped according to countries, and passed Their Majesties in
single file along the Rose Terrace. The garden party that fol-
lowed this reception was attended by nine thousand of Eng-
land's best. It was a beautiful day, the weather having grown
cooler. The wonderful green of the English trees and turf, the
brilliant colors of the summer costumes of the women, the
variegated refreshment marquees, the stirring strains of several
military bands, the sound of the charming English voices as
they passed from group to group, the feeling that one had that
he was mingling with the best that England could produce
in culture, attainment and social position — all these together
produced an exalted condition of mind not to be forgotten.

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I have mentioned only a few of the many strikingly interest-
ing things connected with this celebration. On other occasions
I had appreciated the genius of the English in the organization
of scientific meetings and international congresses and cele-
brations, but never before had I met with such perfection of
arrangement and such cordial hospitality.

A little later, in 1912, the Second International Congress of
Entomology was held in Oxford, England, under the presidency
of Professor E. B. Poulton. The entomologists had held an
international congress two years before at Brussels, at the time
of the International Exposition. I had been in Europe in 1909,
but for some reason I was unable to leave Washington in 1910.
However, I could not miss this one in England. In the early
summer I had been in many European countries, and in late
July I found myself in Brussels, visiting Professor A. Severin.
I remember that Horvath of Budapest dined with us on his
way to the Congress in England, and I remember also, with
great distinctness, the stormy passage from Ostend to Dover
in company with Severin and Ball.

The big, genial and learned Poulton was an ideal presiding
officer, and naturally the English entomologists turned out in
force. One of the leading members of the Committee on
Organizations was G. B. Grosvenor, a young man of brilliant
promise, who the year before, had been a Carnegie student
in the United States. We who knew him prophesied great things
for his future, and those of us who had the future of applied
entomology at heart were much encouraged as we thought of
his possibilities. But after the Congress he went to the seaside
and was accidentally drowned.

As I had been at the Cambridge celebration four years before,
I was quite prepared for the Oxford atmosphere. The wonderful

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Hope Museum, over which the venerated John Obadiah West-
wood presided for so many years, attracted many of us even
away from some of the sessions of the Congress.

A very encouraging feature to me was the first meeting of
the section on apphed entomology. Practically down to that
time the so-called economic entomologist, devoting himself al-
most entirely to agricultural entomology, had been considered
by the university laboratory men, by the museum men, and by
the amateurs interested wholly in Taxonomy, as a sort of
farmer, with nothing like the same scientific standing as them-
selves. I think that there had been no section on applied ento-
mology at Brussels, and I believe that this was the first time
the experiment had been tried. I had been named as the chair-
man of the first session of this especial section, and I entered
the meeting room with a fear that the speakers would have
no audience and that their papers would not be discussed. My
fears, however, were unjustified. The group was large, and no
section had a better attendance. I am inclined to rate the
Oxford Congress as a high point in the progress of applied
entomology in the esteem of other branches of science.

I recall the final dinner with especial pleasure. Many excellent
speeches were made. It was announced that the next congress
would be held in Vienna, and that Anton Handlirsch would
be president. HandHrsch, delightful man that he is, sat at
Poulton's right, and in response to the applause following the
announcement made a charming little speech in German.

But the Vienna Congress was never held, for in the summer
of 1914 Vienna was in almost a volcanic condition. In fact,
the Fourth Congress did not take place until thirteen years
later. Apropos of the interrupting, catastrophic war, I recall
that at the Oxford meeting, Poulton unexpectedly called upon
me to make some remarks, and that I fancifully said that we

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were all brothers there, that we were not English or French or
German or Austrian or Russian or Italian, but that we belonged
to the World Nation of Entomologists. And yet two years later
the very nations I mentioned were in desperate conflict.

It was long after the close of the war that peaceful interna-
tional scientific congresses, attended by delegates from the former
batding nations, were resumed. One of the first of these was
the international conference of phytopathologists and economic
entomologists that was held at Wageningen, Holland, in 1923.

There were present at this congress delegates from nearly all
of the countries that had been at war. We were naturally curious
to see whether there would be any stiflness or any change in
mutual attitudes as a result of the previous violent national
feelings, but everyone seemed determined to ignore the past,
and to act as though the events of the period between 1914 and
191 8 had never occurred. I think, however, that the eyes of
each of us were rather keenly watching for the minutest signs
of discomfort on the part of the others. I thought I noticed
that the Germans were rather on the defensive at first. I saw
signs which indicated that they did not know exactly how
they would be received and treated, though they were friendly
enough and seemed ready to meet the others in a whole-hearted
way. This sensitiveness soon passed away, and most of them
assumed their old pre-war-time manner.

Socially and scientifically, this Wageningen Conference was
a great success. The delegates were royally entertained, and
taken from one point to another through the wonderful bulb-
growing districts of Holland. Many speeches were made by
prominent Dutch officials, and, as I have stated before, much
indignation and regret was expressed at the action of the
United States government. The American delegates were fre-

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quently called upon to speak after addresses of this sort at
dinners and luncheons, but of course all that we could say was
that while we sympathized deeply with the Hollanders, we
had no influence whatever, always making the general state-
ment, however, that we believed that any nation had the right
to protect itself by quarantine against plant enemies and dis-
eases, just as it had the right — just, in fact, as it was its duty —
to quarantine against human diseases.

At the last meeting of this conference a permanent organiza-
tion was established and representative committees were ap-
pointed, with the idea that future international conferences of
the sort would probably be called.

There was much discussion as to the name of the new organ-
ization. In the original call it had been termed an International
Congress of Economic Entomologists and Phytopathologists. In
most European countries, and in certain others, the term Phy-
topathology is held to include the damage done by insects to
growing plants, and it has often resulted from this use of the
term that botanists have been placed in charge of entomological
work. We in America can see no reason why an insect should
be called a disease of plants, or why two services requiring
such different technique and training should be combined under
a single misleading term. So when the motion was made to
omit the words economic entomologist, and when later some
of the delegates, especially the Germans, proposed to compromise
by adopting the words Plant Control (Pflanzen Schutz), we
opposed both suggestions, and, with the important help of the
English delegates and some others, we carried our point.

It may be stated incidentally that later we were able to do
away with the European acceptance of Phytopathology as in-
cluding Agricultural Entomology in the nomenclature used

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officially by the International Institute o£ Agriculture at Rome.

During that same summer of 1923 I attended two other
international gatherings. The first was held in Madrid in May,
under the auspices of the International Institute of Rome, and
it was held solely for the purpose of considering the measures
to be taken against the olive fly, a very injurious insect that
often causes great loss to the great olive industry that centers
in the countries about the Mediterranean Sea. The United
States had been asked to send delegates, but had refused on
the grounds that the olive industry in the United States was
comparatively small, existing only in Southern California, and
that the olive fly was unknown in our country.

I am reminded here of an interesting story bearing on these
facts. A good many years ago Secretary of Agriculture James
Wilson sent for me and told me that he had dined at the
White House the night before, and that the lady on his right,
the Principessa Brancaccio, had told him that she had asked
to be seated next to him, for the reason that her husband's olive
groves in South Italy were badly infested by the olive fly, and
that she, knowing how practical the Americans are in such
matters, had come to America largely to consult him about it.
He told her that he was not an entomologist, but that he would
send some one to her to talk about it the next afternoon. He
placed his carriage at my disposal, gave me a card of intro-
duction, and I went out to the beautiful house at the corner
of Twentieth and Q Streets which the Prince and Princess had
leased for the winter. The Princess was both beautiful and
intelligent. When I asked the exact location of her husband's
olive groves, she stated that they were in Portici, just outside
of Naples. I then told her that the fly did not exist in the
United States, and that the expert who knew most about it
and the way to control it was Professor Antonio Berlese, of

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the Royal School of Agriculture at Portici, which immediately
adjoined her husband's property.

Although the United States, for the reasons before mentioned,
declined to send delegates to the Madrid Conference, I found
myself, just before the date of convocation, in the south of
France, in company with Dr. Paul Marchal of Paris, who was
to represent the French Department of Agriculture at Madrid.
I am a great admirer of Marchal, and greatly enjoy his com-
pany. Then, too, the subject of the conference interested me,
because some day this noxious little fly may make his way to
Southern California. So I went with Marchal to Madrid.

The conference was very interesting and was attended by
delegates from practically every country bordering the Mediter-
ranean. My old friend II Conde de Montornes presided, and
the discussions were all in the French language. Certain purely
scientific sessions were presided over by Dr. Marchal. The only
technical delegates at the conference whom I had met before
were A. de Seabra of Lisbon and Leandro Navarro of Madrid,
but I took the opportunity to visit the splendid Museum of
Natural History, and to have a long talk with the veteran
Ignacio Bolivar and his son, Candido Bolivar y Peltain and
with Ricardo Garcia y Mercet, who had done, and is doing,
admirable work with certain groups of parasites.

During the olive fly discussions, the question of mechanical
sprays was introduced, and it was stated that large scale-spraying
by great machines would be most difficult in the majority of
olive orchards because of the hilly character of the terrain. I
was asked to explain how spraying was done in mountainous
districts in New England in the work against the Gipsy Moth.
Marchal had been over this ground with me in Massachusetts
and southern New Hampshire in the summer of 1913. I told
them not only about the spraying from great ground machines

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but also about the use of the aeroplane — a method which was
proving efJective both in the cotton fields and in forest insect
operations.

I think that it was in August, 1923, that the International
Congress of Agriculture was held in Paris. As I was over
there at the time, I naturally attended it, registering as an
official delegate from the United States Department of Agri-
culture. Several other Americans who had been with me at
Wageningen the month before also attended this conference.

The closing banquet was held in one of the great halls of
the Hotel Continental. The Marquis de Vogue presided with
great ability, tact and charm, and many of the speeches were
admirable. I had been notified that I would be expected to
say something, and therefore I had written out a short speech.
I had protested to the Secretary of the Academic d'Agriculture,
the late Henri Sagnier, that I would have to make my remarks
in English, but he insisted that I should speak in French, so
I asked Paul Marchal to transcribe what I had written, turning
it into his beautiful French, and this I memorized and delivered.
The reason I tell this is so that I may add that I sent a copy
of my remarks to Washington as a part of my official report.
I received a personal letter from the then Secretary of Agricul-
ture, Henry Wallace, who was a good deal of a wag. He thanked
me especially for sending it in French, and said that I probably
thought that this would puzzle him, but he assured me that
he was quite as familiar with the French language as he was
with his native Sanskrit.

I will speak a little later of the Pan-Pacific Union, a remark-
able organization, originating in Honolulu and having its
headquarters there.

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In the summer of 1924 a Pan-Pacific Conservation Congress
was held in Honolulu under the auspices of this Union, and
delegates were present from most of the countries bordering
the Pacific Ocean. Several of us went on from Washington as
delegates from the United States Department of Agriculture,
and other men went from different States, especially from those
of the Pacific coast. Since conservation was the object of the
Congress, the economic entomologists were well represented,
and, although no one seemed to know just why, I was made
first temporary, and then permanent, president. There were in
attendance some extremely interesting men from Japan, China,
Australia, New Zealand, Indo-China, the Dutch East Indies,
Macao and other places, but, as I recollect, the Pacific coast of
South America was not represented. The Congress was in
session a little more than two weeks, and there were some
highly noteworthy papers and discussions. Although on the
whole the proceedings were harmonious, there were dissensions
among the representatives from North China and South China,
and at one or two of the functions the Japanese delegates were
not treated by the prominent Korean citizens of Honolulu
with much courtesy.

The late David Starr Jordan, President-Emeritus of Stanford
University, was there with his charming wife and his talented
son, Eric, who was killed in an automobile accident the follow-
ing year, almost immediately after his marriage. A notable
delegate was Sir Joseph Carruthers, former Premier of New
South Wales. Dinners and luncheons were given almost every
day by organizations from different nationals living in Hono-
lulu, and quite naturally Dr. Jordan, as well as Sir Joseph, who
proved to be an extremely witty after-dinner speaker, were
called upon nearly every time.

I shall never forget how Sir Joseph turned the laugh on

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me at one of these functions, given by the Chinese community.
The presiding officer was Mr. Wang How, a dignified and
impressive Oriental who made what was apparently a cordial
and eloquent address of welcome. But he spoke in Chinese.
As President of the Congress, I was called upon to respond. I
complimented Mr. Wang How upon his remarks (of which
I had not understood a single word) and spoke with admira-
tion of the wonderful Chinese nation, of its marvelous history,
and its wonderful inventions, referring, of course, to the dis-
covery of gunpowder and the mariner's compass, and went on
to demonstrate that the Chinese had been inventive in little
things as well as big ones.

"For example," I said, "take the name of the distinguished
Chairman, Mr. How. That happens to be the first syllable of
my name, therefore my family must have originated in China."
And I therefore greeted Mr. How as a long-lost relative.

After I had taken my seat. Sir Joseph was called upon. He
began by saying that he was much interested in what I had
said, but that he had anticipated me in my discovery of my
relationship to Mr. How, since he had noticed the facial resem-
blance between us as we sat almost side by side at the head
table!

My opening address as Chairman of this Conference was
called "The Evolution of Internationalism" — the one referred
to in the first paragraph of this chapter. I enjoyed writing the
address and in thinking about the general subject. It was pub-
lished locally, and was printed in full in the American journal
Science. I thought that it would be a good idea to send it
about a bit, and in doing so I had an interesting experience.
I sent a copy to my friend Paul Marchal, in Paris, and asked
him to hand it to the late Henri Sagnier, Permanent Secretary
of the Academic d' Agriculture, for possible republication by

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

the Academy in French (a translation having been made by
Dr. Marchal). Sagnier refused on the ground that the word
"InternationaUsm" was altogether too suggestive of "Moscoviet-
ism." Whereupon Marchal took it to the editor of Le Revue
Scientifique, where it was published in full with a somewhat
modified title.^

In 1925, I went to Europe with the purpose of attending three
international gatherings, although I suppose the first could hardly
be called international. It was the triennial meeting of the
Imperial Bureau of Entomology of Great Britain, but it seemed
almost international, since it brought together the official eco-
nomic entomologists of the different British dominions and
colonies. As a matter of fact, I believe I was the only foreigner
invited. After the London Conference I was to have gone to
the International Congress of Agriculture at Warsaw, and later
to the Third International Congress of Entomology at Ziirich.
But I had a bad accident on shipboard, which resulted in
compressed fractures of two vertebrae, and I was held in a
Nursing Home in Glasgow so long that I missed the meetings
at London and at Warsaw. But the Glasgow stay was delightful.
Dr. R. Scott Frew and Dr. Archibald Young, who attended
me, were kindness and skill personified. Miss Cameron, the
head of the Nursing Home, was a charming Scotch lady, the
nominal head of the Clan Cameron, I was told. I fell quite in
love with five of my Scotch nurses. Since then I have never
allowed anyone in my presence to slur Scotland, and I even
listen with distaste to stories of Scotch frugality.
After a good rest, I was able to travel again. I went to

1 «<T >I

"L'Evolution des Rapports Internationaux," Revue Scientifique, Vol. 62, No.
24, pp. 753-754. December 27, 1924.

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

London, then to Paris, and on to Zurich, where I met old
friends and made new ones.

The Zurich Congress of Entomologists was large and en-
thusiastic, and I was not surprised, but very glad, to find that
once more there was an increase in the interest in applied
entomology. This was shown not only by the character of the
papers, but by the increased attendance at the meetings of
that section.

In 1927, having to go to eastern Europe (Poland, Czecho-
slovakia, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Jugoslavia) on an
official mission, I took credentials from the Biological and
Entomological Societies of Washington as a delegate to the
International Congress of Zoology that was to be held at Buda-
pest that summer. Here again there was abundant evidence
that there was a great increase of interest among the scientific
men in questions of applied zoology, and especially applied
entomology. It was a great congress. The president. Dr. G.
Horvath, already eighty years of age, was an entomologist,
and during the days of the Phylloxera scare had done important
work of a distinctly economic character. One of the most in-
teresting of the general lectures was given by Professor Koma-
rek of Prague on the airplane dusting of great spruce forests
in Czechoslovakia against a disastrous outbreak of the Nun
Moth. Then, too, the first session of the section on economic
zoology (I was the chairman) was largely attended, and it
was noticeable that nearly all of the papers read at this session
and at subsequent meetings of this section were of an entomo-
logical nature. The final dinner, given at a great new hotel
across the Danube, was attended by more than a thousand
guests, and was one of the most brilliant functions of the kind
that I have ever attended.

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

In 1928 the Fourth International Congress o£ Entomology
was held at Ithaca, New York. The Zurich Congress of 1925
had selected the United States as the country for the 1928
Congress, had elected me president, and had left the choice
of the exact locality to a small committee of Americans. We
discussed the availability of New York, Boston and Philadelphia,
and finally decided upon Ithaca, not only because that place
is easily reached from the seaboard, but because the buildings
of Cornell University are wonderfully adapted to the holding of
big congresses in the summer time, as had been demonstrated the
previous year at an international congress of botanists. Then, too,
it was judged that the temperature in August at Ithaca would
probably be somewhat lower than that at Philadelphia or New
York, Pittsburgh had also been considered as a meeting place,
largely on account of the existence there of the great Carnegie
Museum, of which the distinguished entomologist. Dr. W, J.
Holland, had so long been the director.

Although the weather was very warm on some of the days
of the meeting, the Congress was a great success. The Ameri-
cans, especially the Cornellians, had reason to be proud. Un-
doubtedly the experience of the previous summer with the
Botanical Congress had made the local people more efficient
in their arrangements than they might otherwise have been,
for it is impossible to point out a single point in which they
failed. All of the foreign delegates left in a very enthusiastic
frame of mind. There was a large attendance of entomologists
from the United States and Canada, as was to be expected,
and it was the first international gathering that many of these
men had seen. I think that nearly all of them left Ithaca with
the firm resolve that they would never miss another international
congress. This is one of the many proofs of the international
value of such gatherings, of their helpfulness in bringing about

[2-5]

FIGHTING THE INSECTS

understandings and their aid, although, it must be admitted,
in a small way, toward the world peace that must come
eventually.

In addition to these international affairs away from home,
I have attended a number o£ such functions held in Washington,
and in a very few of them have taken a small part. For example,
at a Pan-American Health Congress held in one of the early
years of the present century, I spoke on the geographic distri-
bution of the Yellow Fever Mosquito. It was at this congress
that I first met Dr. Carlos Finley of Cuba, who was accom-
panied by Dr. Juan Guiteras, and then also for the first time
I met Dr. Eduardo Liceaga of Mexico. All these men have
been mentioned in previous pages. I think that this meeting
must have been in 1903. It was at this Congress that a reception
was held by President Roosevelt that I shall mention in another
chapter.

Later there was another Pan-American Congress, this time
a scientific one, and at this I addressed one of the sections on
the necessity for cooperation among the American nations in
the warfare against insect pests.

In 1912, while I was returning from Europe, where I had
attended the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the found-
ing of the Royal Society at London, and the Second International
Congress of Entomology at Oxford, I met in the smoking-
room of the steamer. Dr. Zort, late Surgeon-General of the
Baltic fleet of the Russian navy, who was on his way to attend
an international congress of hygiene and demography at Wash-
ington. It will be remembered that the ill-fated Baltic fleet
started from Russia during the Russo-Japanese War, and after
supposedly firing on the British fishing vessels in the North
Sea, made its way in time to Chinese waters, and there was

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

destroyed by the Japanese fleet. Dr. Zort told me that he had
been picked up in the water by a Japanese rescuing boat and
had been carried to Japan, where he received the most extraor-
dinary courtesy. He was not only allowed to care surgically
for his own compatriots, but was invited professionally to attend
many major operations. On the transatlantic vessel at the same
time was Professor Fujisawa, the mathematician, whom I had
met in London, when he was a delegate to the Royal Society
function from the University of Tokio. I brought the two men
together, and Fujisawa countered Dr. Zort's stories concerning
the courtesy he received in Japan by telling us of the extraordi-
nary courtesy that he had received in Russia on his way across
country from Japan to England.

Dr. Zort was a big man, convivial and companionable to a
degree. I put him up at the Cosmos Club on our arrival at
Washington, and one night, when I visited the Club, I found
him in the library, where he had found a book entitled, "The
Bartender's Guide," and was engaged in copying the recipes
for rather more than fifty different kinds of cocktails.

The last one of these international gatherings that I have
attended down to the present time was the recendy completed
Fifth International Congress of Entomology held in Paris. But
this chapter is already too long, and I shall add something
about the Congress in the very rambling final chapter.

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Chapter XI

T

.HE American Association for the Advancement o£ Science
was founded in the early 1850's, some years before I was born.
Its organization was based on that of the British Association
for the Advancement of Science, and it has had a long and
useful life. Its annual migratory meetings were interrupted by
the Civil War, but only for two or three years, and its presi-
dents (elected annually) have included many of the men who
have been most prominent in scientific work down to the
present day.

It was soon found that a permanent secretary was necessary.
Professor Joseph Lovering of Cambridge was the first one. He
was succeeded, in the early 1870's, by Frederick W. Putnam of
Salem, who held office by reelection every five years until 1898.
At that time he was getting old, and there was a feeling that
the Association was getting into a rut and was not increasing
either in size or in usefulness, so it was thought best to look
for another man. At the meeting held in August, 1898, at
Detroit, Michigan, rather to my surprise, I was elected perma-
nent secretary. I was glad to have the office, since it brought me
into contact with scientific men all over the country, and also
added somewhat to my small income. I held the office with

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

more or less success for twenty-two years. Looking back, it
seems rather sure that no other experience could have been
better for me in broadening my scientific outlook, and that in
making the contacts which the position afforded, it helped the
Federal service in which I was engaged. For the next twenty-
two years the annual meeting was held in some city (usually
at a university), and these migrations covered the whole coun-
try. The association included among its members nearly all the
active working scientific men of the country, as well as a great
number of others interested in science or who wished to become
patrons of science in a small way.

Many incidents connected with these meetings come to my
mind, and some of them may be told.

After the Detroit meeting in 1898, a large number of us
went on to Toronto, where the annual meeting of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science was held during
the week following our meeting. The Toronto gathering was
a decided success. The meetings of the British Association have
always been more brilliant socially than ours. The Governor
General of Canada, Lord Aberdeen, was much in evidence, and
many distinguished men had crossed the Atlantic to be present.
Lord Kelvin and Lord Lister were there, as well as Sir John
Evans, the president of the Association for that year, and many
others of scarcely lesser note. As the newly-elected permanent
secretary of the American Association, I was given a seat on
the platform with the dignitaries at the public lectures. It was
in August, and it was very hot, so, ignoring form, I wore
my straw hat to these evening functions with my dinner dress.
On leaving the platform after the first lecture, I found myself
touching elbows with no less a person than Lord Lister, and
to my great joy I saw that he also had a straw hat. I told him
that I was much relieved to see this, and he put his arm around

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

my shoulder and said in that utterly charming way of his,
"My dear boy, it's not what's on your head that counts; it's
what's in it!"

At the final banquet I was much impressed by the opening
words of Sir John Evans' remarks. He said, as I remember it,
"If it be given a man to write his own epitaph, I should like
to word mine now: 'Here lies the body of Sir John Evans, who I
had the great honor of presiding over the Toronto meeting of the ,^
British Association, and who, during his lifetime, did a little I
toward the establishment of archaeology as a science.' " Down to '
that time it had never occurred to me that any archaeologist
had ever considered his pursuit as non-scientific.

At this Toronto meeting I had my first introduction to the
"Red Lion Club" of the British Association. This club is, or l|
was, composed of the convivial members of the association, and
at each meeting it was their custom to give a dinner at which
there was all sorts of fun (a corresponding organization in the
American Association for years was known as "Section Q").
At the Red Lion dinners all of the members were supposed to
be lions. There were two or three ushers, known as jackals,
whose wands of office were representations of human thigh
bones, made of wood, but colored with red paint. It was not
permitted to laugh, but the lions were expected to roar. At
every dinner certain new men were initiated as cubs. At this
Toronto dinner there were twelve Americans, and it would
have taken too long to initiate each one separately, so a single
one was chosen to personify the dozen. This happened to be
General A. W. Greely, the Arctic explorer. The King Lion
who presided was Professor MacAlister, the mathematician of
the University of Dubhn. He said, "I shall not only initiate
General Greely into the mysteries of full-blown Red Lionship,
but I will in addition confer upon him the degree of D.D."

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

(Loud roars.) "You seem surprised that I should confer this
particular degree upon this man, and I will explain that it is
because, although he did not reach the North Pole, he came
d d near to it."

I could go on for many pages with stories of the funny things
that happened at these meetings. For instance, in 1905, we were
meeting at New Orleans in the winter time. The city had
recovered from what in June bid fair to be a serious epidemic
of Yellow Fever, but which had been controlled and finally
stamped out by well planned and conducted anti-mosquito
operations under the efficient guidance of Dr. J. H. White, of
the United States Public Health Service. During the meeting
the officers and members of the Boston Club gave a smoker
in honor of the officers of the Association. In the course of the
evening there were three speeches. Dr. H. W. Wiley was called
upon, of course. He was inimitable, as usual. I remember that
he called attention to the fact that the city of New Orleans
was largely built on soil that must have been brought down
far from the north by the great Mississippi River and its tribu-
taries. He went on to say that his father's farm was in southern
Indiana, on the banks of the Ohio River, and that much of
the farm had been washed away in the course of years. He
felt sure that the soil from his father's farm formed the base
on which the St. Charles Hotel was built, but that he had
decided not to enter suit against the hotel or against the city
for damages.

Then, since I was permanent secretary of the Association, I
was called upon. I told a little story to this effect: One day at
my office I was called to the telephone, and the man at the
other end of the line announced that he was a Post Office in-
spector and wished me to come to see him at once. I asked for
some reason, but he replied in a mandatory way that I must

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

come immediately. And so I went. He proved to be a large,
florid, important-looking person, and he said, somewhat with
the air of a justice of a police court, "Mr. Howard, you are
supposed to be the secretary of" (consulting some papers) "an
Association of the name of the — ah, yes, here it is — the Ameri-
can Association for the Advancement of Something-or-other."

I said, "Yes."

"Tell me something about this organization," he demanded.
"Has it any standing? Is it well known.? Is it a new thing that
you are trying to promote?"

"No," I replied, "it was founded fifty years ago."

"How many members has it?"

"Nearly two thousand," I told him.

"Has it any members in Washington?"

"Yes," I said; "very many."

"Tell me the names of some of them."

"Well," I said, "there is Professor S. P. Langley of the Smith-
sonian Institution; Professor Simon Newcomb, the head of the
Naval Observatory; Professor Alexander Graham Bell, the in-
ventor of the telephone; Chief Justice Fuller of the Supreme
Court of the United States "

"Hold on," he said. "That'll do. It really seems to be a rather
meritorious organization," he added in a patronizing way, and
then went on: "You see, it does beat the deuce how suspicious
some people are! A man up in New Jersey received a notice
from you stating that he had been elected a member of this
Association and asking for five dollars' entrance fee. He immedi-
ately notified the Post Office that this was another fraud, and
the case was assigned to me for investigation."

That evening I looked up the case and found that the man
had been proposed for membership by a prominent professor
in Princeton University.

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

Wiley's remarks and mine were well received, and then a
local man, James J. McLaughlin, was called on. He was evi-
dendy a man o£ standing and culture, but to the surprise of us
visitors he spoke in a strange dialect that we were told was
Acadian ("Cajun" they call it down there). It seems that he was
impersonating a mythical individual whom he had made locally
famous and who was a native wit. He put into the mouth of this
mythical person a sparkling series of comments on the remarks
that Wiley and I had made, and upon the Association and its
proceedings, mispronouncing and misinterpreting any number
of scientific words and phrases that he had read in the news-
papers in the preceding few days. His speech was an overwhelm-
ing success. The local members of the Boston Club had a
hearty laugh at our expense, and we ourselves enjoyed it
immensely.

At a meeting held in Denver, Colorado, in the early part of
the present century, I first met John Hayes Hammond. He
called at my office in the Brown Palace Hotel, told me that as
at that time he was a citizen of Denver, he wished to do his
share towards the entertainment of the Association, and asked
me to invite twenty-five men of my own selection to dine with
him at the Denver Club. I accepted the commission willingly,
and picked out a rather famous company. I remember that W J
McGee was one of them. When I asked him he said, "Of course
I'll come. They have mighty good dinners at the Denver Club,
But who is this man Hammond who's to be our host?"

"Why," said I, "don't you know? He is the famous mining
engineer whose exploits have been in every one's mouths. He
is the man who was carried across Mexico in a coffin to escape
assassination. And have you forgotten that he is the American
engineer who accompanied Jameson on his disastrous raid in
the Transvaal?"

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

"By George!" said McGee. "I would willingly pay a high price
for sitting at the table with him."

I told all this to Hammond the next day, and he said, "Doctor,
in view of the high standing of these men, I will reduce the price
of introductions to, say, twenty-five dollars per."

As I have mentioned Hammond's name, I may as well tell
one other story about him. Years later I was a guest at an
engineers' dinner in Washington. Hammond was the principal
speaker. His subject was "The Engineer in Politics," and he
played up all the qualifications of the engineer — how he is the
real man in big affairs, and how, of all citizens, his judgment
is the best. Therefore, the engineer, for the good of the country,
should go into politics and take a most active part. It was a good
speech, and Hammond sat down probably well satisfied. At all
events, the rest of us liked the speech extremely.

The man who followed him was Franklin K. Lane, then
Secretary of the Interior, a delightful man and a famous after-
dinner speaker. He smiled broadly at his audience, and said
that he had been very much impressed by Mr. Hammond's
speech, and was inclined to agree with him.

"But," he said, "back in my brain I think that, if I remember,
the last time that I heard of an engineer going into politics, he
wound up in jail!"

Of course the Jameson Raid was fresh in our memories, and
we all yelled with delight.

While there can be no doubt that this permanent secretaryship
was a good thing for me personally, in ways that I have already
pointed out, it must also have been beneficial to applied en-
tomology, since it brought an entomologist into intimate asso-
ciation with workers in other branches of science, who were
more highly esteemed by people at large, and it helped to show

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

them that an entomologist is not necessarily a confounded crank.

At all events, I made hundreds of friends, and many warm
ones. When it appeared that my job might well be taken on by
a younger man, the Council apparently had no hesitation in
making me president of the Association. Of course this, too,
helped to broaden the concept of an entomologist.

It is the custom of the Association to ask its president to
deliver his retiring address at the meeting following the one
over which he presides, and thus it happened that, although I
occupied the chair at the meeting held in Chicago in the Christ-
mas holidays of 1919, I gave my address at the meeting in
Toronto, Canada, in the holidays of 1920-1921,

This mention of the time of the year when these meetings
were held reminds me of another matter which should be men-
tioned. In the early days the annual meetings were held in
August, following the plan of the British Association. Since
this was during the long vacation, it was especially convenient
for the professors in the colleges and universities and for the
teachers in the schools. Moreover, although August in the States
is not so distinctly the vacation month as it is in European
countries, it is chosen by many people. But with the new century
we made a change, and since that time we have held the
annual meeting in the week which includes January i. In order
to bring this about we conducted a lengthy correspondence
with most of the university people and secured the very general
adoption of what is now called "Convocation Week," in which
most of the learned societies now hold their meetings. Nearly
all of the colleges and universities have arranged their Christmas
vacation schedules so that their people may attend these meet-
ings. The expression "Convocation Week" is now to be found
in the later American dictionaries.
I remember that this idea originated in the old Committee

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on Policy of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science. This committee had a rather interesting beginning. Be-
fore I was made permanent secretary, my predecessor, F. W.
Putnam, conducted affairs in his own way, and there was a feel-
ing that this was not quite right. So, gradually and very tact-
fully, Professor J. McK. Cattell and the late Professor R. S.
Woodward of Columbia, as well as Professor Charles Sedgwick
Minot of Harvard, formed themselves into an advisory commit-
tee and met frequently with me, thus constituting the beginning
of the Committee on Policy, which lasted for many years, and
of late has become known as the Executive Committee. Other
members were added from time to time, but it was all done
very tactfully — so tactfully indeed that I really supposed that
I had something to do with it. As a matter of fact, I believe
that I really did suggest the names of W. J. Humphreys and
H. B. Ward, who served on the committee for many years; and
I readily welcomed H. S. Fairchild and D. T. Macdougal, who,
I think, were suggested by Professor Cattell.

And now to go back for a moment to the Toronto meeting.
I was treated royally, and was given the honorary degree of
Doctor of Science by Toronto University. During my stay, I
was the guest of Sir Reginald Falconer, the President of the
University, and gave an address that was well received by the
association. It was in this address, by the way, that I first pointed
out in a somewhat strenuous way what I conceived to be the
great insect menace, upon the subject of which I have recently
written a book.

One of the interesting incidents of this Toronto meeting was
the presence of Professor William Bateson of Cambridge Uni-
versity, who gave an evening lecture on some of the aspects of
evolution. In this he incidentally spoke of the broadening of the
concept of evolution and hinted at some of the weak points in

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Darwin's famous "Origin of Species." As was quite to be
expected, this point was seized upon at once by people of different
sects, and the lecture was played up in the newspapers as a
tremendous blow to the whole Darwinian hypothesis. Bateson
was a delightful man — a tall old fellow with beetling gray eye-
brows. He made an after-dinner speech at the annual dinner of
the American Society of Naturalists, held during this Toronto
meeting. He was the first speaker, and had not finished his cigar
when he was called upon. He did not discard his cigar when
he rose to speak, but would occasionally stop in the course of his
remarks, and puff on it a bit. The next day, meeting him at
a luncheon, I said to him, "Professor Bateson, some of us were
a bit worried last night at the difficulty that you had in keeping
your cigar going while you were speaking. In fact, one of us left
the room immediately after your speech and spent the rest of
the night trying to invent an apparatus by means of which
an after-dinner speaker can smoke and speak at the same time."

The fine old chap beamed down upon me under his beetling
eyebrows and remarked, "Fancy! What an extraordinary people
you Americans are!"

I must say a little about that remarkable man, Charles W.
Eliot. I met him first at the Boston meeting in the summer of
1898. As President of Harvard, he very naturally made one of the
principal addresses of welcome. I was not especially impressed
by his personality, but I was by the great respect and affection
which the Boston people apparently had for him. Most of them
seemed to think that he could not possibly make a mistake —
that he was all-wise. As an outsider and familiar only with the
broad aspects of his career, I rather wondered at this.

During the World War there was some talk of abandoning
one of the annual meetings on account of upset conditions.
TraveUing was difficult. Trains were fewer and were over-

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crowded, and many of the most prominent members were
actively engaged in war work. But Pittsburgh offered itself as
a meeting place and urged us to come. We finally accepted, and
as Dr. Eliot had been elected president, largely since a new section
of education had been established, I notified him of the decision.
He wrote me that he thought it would be very unwise for him
to accept. He was then seventy-nine years old, and the following
year, when he would have to make his address as retiring presi-
dent, he would be eighty. We used some sound arguments, and
he finally accepted. I naturally saw much of him at the Pitts-
burgh meeting and during the following year.

When he arrived at Pittsburgh he was apparently in vigorous
health. I asked him how he had spent the summer, and he rather
startled me by replying that he had largely occupied himself
with rowing and bicycling. He did his duty at Pittsburgh almost
more than conscientiously, and introduced certain features that
were new. He conceived it to be his duty as president to pay
a visit to each one of the many sections — a capital idea, which
I had seen carried out in the British Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science.

The new section of agriculture was founded at this time. Dr.
Eliot attended the first meeting, and of course was called upon
to speak. We were all in a state of great excitement about the
war, and his remarks, beginning naturally with a consideration
of the necessity for intensive agriculture in our country in the
existing emergency, went on into other features of the great
conflict. He was very bitter against the Germans and spoke at
some length concerning the alleged Belgian atrocities that were
then reported luridly in the newspapers. During his speech four
German professors who, while they had not been interned here,
had been caught in the United States and were unable to go

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home, rose from their seats, walked down the aisle, and left
the room.

The newspapers said nothing about this incident since we had
a very clever press secretary in those days (the Theodore
Waters whom I have told about in a previous chapter), who
conceived it to be his principal duty to keep certain things out
of the newspapers rather than to see that certain other things
got in. So this incident was covered up. But a day or so after
the meeting Waters told the story to a little group of newspaper
men with whom he had been associated. One of them — one of
those newspaper chaps who think in headlines — said, "Gosh,
Waters, why didn't you tell us? Oh, what a headline! 'And the
Germans goose-stepped down the aisle while Eliot hurled denun-
ciations at the Huns.' "

I have said that I met Dr. Eliot for the first time at the Boston
meeting in 1899. That, I think, was the last of the August meet-
ings of the Association, and it was a memorable one for many
reasons. Since it was the first at which I officiated as permanent
secretary, I have probably remembered the interesting and funny
things more vividly. It was very hot at the time. There was a
lobster salad served at one of the general luncheons, and that
salad is still remembered by many members, who, through it,
became acquainted with a rather mild ptomaine poisoning. One
friend of mine always refers to it as "that lobster salad meeting."

Josiah Quincy was then Mayor of Boston, and he gave a dinner
at the Union Club for a number of us. He sat at one end of the
big table, and an interesting friend of mine and of his, E. A.
MacDowell (a son of General MacDowell of Civil War fame),
sat at the other. After dinner the Mayor introduced a famous
French anthropologist who was a special guest of the association
at the meeting. The Frenchman rose and began: "Zis morning
I did spik to the Association in ze French, and I fear me they

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did not understand me. So tonight I will spik in ze English."
Whereupon MacDowell at the other end of the table (or possibly
it was Professor Sedgwick) sang out in a purposely villainous
French, "lei ong parle frangais," which caused a great laugh and
confused the Frenchman, who nevertheless went on in some-
what halting English.

At this dinner I sat between Dr. Chadwick and the famous
botanist Professor W. G. Farlow. They were great friends and
had been fellow students at Harvard. They chaflfed each other
unmercifully and very wittily, Pd give a farm, if I had one, if
I could remember some of the clever things that they said!

I became well acquainted with Professor Farlow afterwards.
He was one of the most charming men I have ever known, and
one of the wittiest. He was president of the American Society
of Naturalists a year or so later. Their annual meeting was held
at New Haven. Farlow invited me to come on and speak at the
final dinner. As I remember the subject was "Zoology under the
Government." It happened that the Society had been having a
general discussion that afternoon on the topic of research in the
universities, and I took my cue from that. But just before I
began to speak one of the men whispered to me that although
Farlow was an old bachelor, it had just been announced that he
was engaged to be married. And so I began my remarks by
asking the old conundrum: "Why does a married man live
longer than a bachelor?" — stating that it was apropos of some-
thing I had just heard about, and of course I gave the answer:
"He doesn't. It only seems longer." And then I went on with
my remarks. I referred to the afternoon discussion and said that
many of the teachers regretted greatly that they had no time for
research, and that very possibly they envied the government
men for that reason. But, I pointed out, that while the govern-
ment men apparently had all of their time for research, just as

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soon as one of them showed any great ability he was put into an
executive position, where he had to fritter away no end of time
in the multifarious things demanded by the red tape of govern-
ment. And so, I went on to say, the government men did not
have the great satisfaction of having trained the early steps of
some future great investigator.

I thought I had made a good point and sat down rather satis-
fied with myself. But Farlow, probably still resenting my refer-
ence to his engagement, said, "That is all very interesting, but
I am sure that many of us here would be only too glad to turn
over to Dr. Howard the training of the early steps of many
future great investigators." This met with an instant response
from the four hundred teachers present, who broke into hearty
laughter at my expense.

A year or so later Farlow was president of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, and in the early
part of his retiring address he spoke of the progress of science
and wittily referred to certain attempts at progress as resembling
the locomotion of a crab, sometimes sidewise, sometimes back-
ward, or to that of the squid, which conceals its exact position
by emitting clouds of ink.

In a previous chapter I referred to New Orleans and to the
charming French restaurant kept by Victor Berot on Bourbon
Street. During the New Orleans meeting of the Association in
1904 or 1905, 1 naturally visited this restaurant as often as possible
and introduced many members to it. So on New Year's Eve,
when Professor Farlow invited me to sit out the Old Year with
himself and his wife at some good restaurant, I naturally took
them to Victor's old place. The restaurant was crowded, and at
five minutes to midnight the head waiter came to our table and
presented the compliments of the proprietor, with the hope that
he might join us in drinking our healths on the stroke of mid-

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night. Old Victor was dead, but the new proprietor, with the
same charming French courtesy that characterized his predeces-
sor, came down the long room, stood with us as we rose, and with
exquisite courtesy drank to our health and prosperity. It was
quite as if it had been the ghost of old Victor himself.

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Chapter Xll

I

HAVE no very good excuse for writing about the Presidents
of the United States under whom I have served so long. During
his office the President hves in the hmeHght, and the people
throughout the country know much about him. But he is, for the
term of his office, our first citizen, and therefore anything about
him is of interest to all of us. Therefore, I shall set down what
has happened to me in the way of contacts with presidents.
With nearly all of them, these have been scanty, and it must be
remembered that in all these years I was simply an insignificant
office holder, and that there were in Washington very many
others whose reminiscences of Presidents would be much more
interesting than mine.

When I first went to Washington in November, 1878, Ruther-
ford B. Hayes was President — not a very popular President, but
a very good one. He was a clean, straightforward, fine man,
and Mrs. Hayes was one of the most beautiful and charming
women I have ever met.

It so happened that Rutherford B. Hayes, Jr. (Rud Hayes, we
called him) had been a fellow-student of mine at Cornell. In an
earlier chapter I have told how Mac Borden and I used to go to
the White House occasionally to play whist. Then we often saw

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both the President and Mrs. Hayes. The President seemed rather
austere and was probably weighed down by official troubles,
but Mrs. Hayes was friendly, democratic and motherly, and
completely won the hearts of two rather lonesome boys. Her
beauty and her charm are readily seen in the portrait of her
painted by E. F. Andrews (my old and very dear friend) that
still hangs in the White House.

The Presidential mansion was overrun with visitors in those
days, and they were admitted to almost all parts of the building.
They could even peep in the door (always open) of Mrs. Hayes'
sitting-room, where she was often seen at her sewing-machine.
As I remember it, her personal charm was like that of Mrs.
Coolidge, so wonderfully well known to people of a much later
date. Let me give you an example of the impression she made.

One day an excursion party arrived from Ithaca. They called
upon their Member of Congress, Mr. Dwight, and asked him
if he could get them a chance to shake hands with the President
and Mrs. Hayes. Mr. Dwight arranged it readily, and they
were asked to assemble at the White House at eleven o'clock
one morning. Two of the excursionists, prominent Ithaca busi-
ness men, old friends of mine, called on me at my office and
asked me to go with them. The excursionists were a miscel-
laneous lot. We were ushered into the East Room, formed in
line, and the President and Mrs. Hayes and Rud came in.
Rud spotted me and called me off to one side, partly under
a curtain, where we watched the show. The excursionists
were greeted cordially as they passed the Presidential party, and
they were greatly impressed. A few of the earlier ones came over
and joined Rud and myself. Presently a man who had just
passed through (I am ashamed to say that his shirt and collar
were dirty and that his chin bore traces of tobacco juice) came
up to us, beaming all over.

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

"Boys," he said to us, "what do you suppose she said to me?
Would you believe it? She said, 'I am very glad to know you,
Mr. Smith.' I am going back to Ithaca and tell my wife that
the finest lady in the world said that she was very glad to
know me!"

I knew Garfield before he was President. I have told of meet-
ing him at President White's in Ithaca. He was then a Member
of Congress from Ohio. When I came to Washington I saw
him several times on the floor of the House and in the Con-
gressional Library, but was too bashful to speak to him. Colonel
and Mrs. Carter knew him very well, and he sometimes dropped
into their apartment in the evening, with his friend, Charles
Foster (at that time also a Member of Congress from Ohio and
afterwards Secretary of the Treasury), and I was frequently
called in for a hand at euchre. Later still, he lived at the corner
of Thirteenth and I, next door to Nelly McCauley's boarding
house, where I took my meals, and where the Garfields some-
times came for dinner. He was one of my great admirations, but
I was too bashful to talk to him, although he was a .most
approachable man.

Of course my most vivid recollection of President Garfield
was when I saw Jules Guiteau shoot him in the old Pennsylvania
Railroad Station as I was starting on my first Western field trip.
But that I have told elsewhere.

I saw very little of Presidents Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison,
McKinley and Coolidge, and any statements of my impressions
of these men would not add to the interest of this story.

Both from his political activities and from the fact that he was
a keen naturalist, Roosevelt had always appealed to my imagi-
nation and interested me gready. I had met him before his elec-

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

tion to the Vice-Presidency. Recently the Roosevelt Distinguished
Service Medal was presented to Dr. C. Hart Merriam, w^hom I
have mentioned on an earlier page, and Merriam's address after
receiving the medal is published in full in Science for February
12, 1932. It is entitled "Roosevelt the Naturalist." In this address
Dr. Merriam modesdy referred to a meeting of the Biological
Society of Washington, at which he had discussed the validity of
several species of western animals, crossing swords with Roose-
velt. That was when the future President was a member of the
United States Civil Service Commission, somewhere between
1889 and 1895. I remember that meeting very well, since I was
president of the Biological Society at the time.

One day the program committee of the society asked Dr.
Merriam to present a paper at the next meeting. It seems that
in the columns of the journal Science, Roosevelt had criticized
Merriam's classification of the big game animals of North Amer-
ica, not so much from the standpoint of the systematic zoologist,
but from the standpoint of a hunter, claiming that Merriam went
into too many refined details, and that lots of points known to
the old trappers and hunters should be taken into consideration
in basing a classification. Merriam told the committee that he
would prepare a paper on big game animals if Mr. Roosevelt
could be induced to be present at the meeting and discuss the
paper. So it was arranged.

After the meeting had opened (it was in the old hall of the
Cosmos Club) Mr. Roosevelt and W. Hallett Phillips came in
at the back of the hall and sat on a rear seat. They were rather
conspicuous because they were the only persons in the room in
evening dress. They listened intently to Merriam's talk, in which,
of course, he riddled Roosevelt's argument in Science. It was a
long and very interesting address. At its conclusion, from the
chair, I invited Mr. Roosevelt to take part in the discussion

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although he was not a member of the society; whereupon he
and Philhps came to the front, PhiUips sitting in a front seat
while Roosevelt took the floor. He made a very forceful argu-
ment from his viewpoint and obviously from that of other
hunters, and rather staggered some of the scientific men in the
audience by the cogency of his reasoning. He talked at length,
as was customary with him, and the hour of adjournment (ten
o'clock), came before he had finished. But by unanimous vote he
was allowed to proceed until he was satisfied. He sat down after
having made a distinct impression on his scientific and rather
critical audience. Merriam asked for five minutes in which to
reply. He completely demolished the Rooseveltian argument,
and there was nothing more to be said. It was a memorable
meeting, and no one who was there will ever forget it. Most of
us saw Roosevelt for the first time and were greatly impressed
by him.

Incidentally, the W. Hallett Phillips who was with him was
a member of the Metropolitan Club and also of the Cosmos
Club. He had evidently been dining with Roosevelt at the
Metropolitan Club before attending the meeting. I knew him
simply as a clubman and a society man and rather wondered
why he was with Roosevelt and why he was interested in the
subject. The meeting was on Saturday night, and on the fol-
lowing Monday I saw by the newspapers that Phillips had died
on the intervening day. He had gone down the Potomac on
a yacht, and the boat had jibbed, a halyard catching him around
the neck, breaking it and throwing him into the water.

I knew nothing of Phillips' real life until some months later,
when Rudyard Kipling published a poem, "The Red Gods,"
describing the tendency of the young man to get close to nature,
to leave civilized pursuits, to get out into the woods and
trackless wilds, etc. And this poem, to my surprise, was dedi-

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cated to Phillips. On inquiry I found that Phillips, after his
seemingly butterfly life in Washington during the winter, went
every year into the North Woods or some other far place and
hunted and fished. Furthermore, he was interested in ethnology
and had made a study of the American Indian. Of course this
accounted for his acquaintance with Roosevelt.

When Roosevelt became President in September, 1901, he was
forty-three years old, younger than I. Then for the first time
I felt that I was growing old. At least two rather remarkable
incidents during his administration stand out in my recollection.

The Panama Canal was about to be built, and the question
of the health of the employees was a vital one. A committee
consisting of Doctors Osier and Welch, of the Johns Hopkins
Medical School; Dr. John R. Musser of Philadelphia, who was
then President of the American Medical Association; Dr. Bryant
of New York (then President of the New York Academy of
Medicine) ; and I (representing the American Association for
the Advancement of Science) called on the President to urge
him to appoint a distinguished sanitarian as a member of the
Panama Commission. Dr. Welch, in his usual happy and force-
ful way, began to state the argument, but was interrupted before
he had said more than a sentence or two by the President, who,
as I recall, spoke about as follows:

"Dr. Welch and gentlemen, I appreciate as fully and strongly
as you can possibly put it the importance of sanitation in the
digging of the Canal. I realize that the sanitary problem is quite
as great as the engineering problem. If I could, I would follow
your advice and would appoint a man who would meet with
your approval, but I can not. My hands are tied. I remember
that once, when I was hunting in the Dakotas — just my guide
and myself — the weather was distinctly bad. The thermometer
was an incredible number of degrees below zero; and the wind

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

was blowing an incredible number of miles per hour. Neither
my guide nor I had said a word for a very long time, and then
it began to snow. I opened my lips after this long silence and
said, 'I'd rather it wouldn't snow.' The taciturn guide replied,
'This isn't a day for rather s.' Now, gentlemen, I would rather
do as you suggest, but it isn't a day for rathers. The Congress
has already fixed the composition of the Canal Commission.
There must be an engineer, a business man, etc. Nothing is said
about a sanitarian. But, assuring you of my deep appreciation of
the matter, I promise you that I will find the best man possible,
to take care of the health of the Zone. And I will see that he gets
full authority, even if I have to pay him a salary larger than
those of the Commissioners themselves."

Of course, history shows that he did not have to look beyond
our own army, and that General Gorgas, fresh from his clean-up
of Havana, was put in charge of the sanitation of the Canal with
military authority.

During the Roosevelt administration the famous conference
of the governors of the different States was held to discuss the
subject of conservation. This was the first big conservation move-
ment in the United States. In anticipation of the conference,
experts in different departments of the governments were asked
to prepare reports, which were assembled and studied. I hap-
pened to be one of the experts and was therefore invited to the
conference. The sessions were held in the big East Room of the
White House, and the scene was most impressive. President
Roosevelt was in the chair. At one side of him sat the members
of the Cabinet, and at the other Justices of the Supreme
Court. The Reverend Edward Everett Hale, at that time ap-
proaching his end, gave the invocation. In the body of the room
were seated, not only the governors of the different States of the
Union and their aides, but prominent national figures of various

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kinds. William J. Bryan, for example, was there; John Mitchell,
the leader of the Federation of Labor; J. J. Hill, the great rail-
road builder; Andrew Carnegie; the presidents of a number of
principal universities, and all of the government experts.

At the conclusion of the morning session the President arose
and said, "We have come together in this opening session before
I have had the chance to greet you formally and to welcome
you to the White House and to this conference. Therefore, I
will take it as a favor if, as you pass out of the room, you will
form in line and give me a chance to shake you by the hand
and bid you welcome." This we did, and, as chance would
have it, I found myself in line immediately behind Dr. C. Hart
Merriam, the animal and bird man. Immediately in front of
him was William J. Bryan. As we reached the President, Mr.
Bryan, in a pompous and somewhat condescending way (at least
it seemed so to me), said, "Mr. President, I congratulate you,
sir, on having started this conservation movement, which, in
my opinion, has tremendous possibilities of good for the future
of our country. I assure you, sir, that it meets my entire approval
and will receive my hearty support." The President, with a trace
of a humorous gleam in his eye, as he looked over Mr. Bryan's
shoulder and saw Merriam and myself, said simply, "Mr. Bryan,
I am pleased. 'Praise from Sir Hubert is praise indeed.' " Then,
turning instantly to Merriam, he said, "How are you. Hart?
What do you suppose John" (meaning John Burroughs) "and
I saw on the twenty-fifth of March at Pine Knot? A Yellow
Warbler, by George!" And then, turning to me, said, "Hello,
Doctor! How are the bugs?"

He was hail-fellow-well-met with all sorts of people, but could
be quite the reverse, in fact, extremely dignified on occasion.
I remember that once during his administration I went with
the Pan-American Health Congress delegates to call at the

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White House. There was a long line of distinguished medical
men from the Central and South American republics, and they
were introduced to the President in turn by Dr. Walter Wyman,
then Surgeon-General of the Public Health and Marine Hospital
Service. The men in line could hear what the President said to
each delegate as he was introduced. They were impressed not
only by the solemnity of the occasion, but also by the extraor-
dinary knowledge that the President showed concerning each
individual presented, and by the happy manner in which he
greeted him. For example, when Dr. Eduardo Liceaga, the
President of the Superior Board of Health of Mexico, was intro-
duced, the President said, "Dr. Liceaga, it affords me the most
profound pleasure to greet you, sir, not only as the eminent
sanitarian and administrator that you are, but as the representa-
tive of our nearest sister republic, for which we have the greatest
admiration and affection." He said things like this to each man
as he advanced, and the delegates were gready impressed and
formed in a group to listen. However, near the end of the line
was Dr. A. H. Doty of New York, who had been Health
Officer of that port when the President was Police Commissioner
of New York City. As he reached the President, Dr. Wyman
said, "Mr. President, it is not necessary to introduce this gentle-
man." Whereupon the President slapped Doty on the back and
said, "Old man, how are you.?" This was all right as far as Doty
was concerned, but it altered the impression that the President
had been making upon the Latin American delegates.

By the end of his administration, Roosevelt had made definite
plans to start immediately on his African trip, and on the day
before the inauguration of President Taft an invitation came to
the bureau chiefs to call and say good-by. I went up late with
Secretary James Wilson, Logan Waller Page and AUerton Cush-
man. I think that we were the last ones received. Secretary Wil-

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son introduced us, although it was not necessary, as the President
knew us, and we said good-by. Roosevelt did practically all the
talking, as was nearly always the case, but I managed to slip in
a remark, quite by good luck, to this effect, "Mr. President, take
especially good care of yourself in Africa, and by all means avoid
the Sleeping Sickness." With his usual broad grin, he repHed,
"Good idea. Doctor! That disease wouldn't comport with the
popular idea of my character, would it?"

On his return from Africa, he lectured before the National |
Geographic Society, and I met him at a luncheon given by ;

Gilbert Grosvenor. There were no speeches at the luncheon, but
he answered questions, and when I asked him about the Sleeping
Sickness, he gave us an extraordinary account of the disease and
of the ravages it had made in Africa.

Before he reached this country on his return from Africa, he
travelled in Europe, lectured before the Sorbonne in Paris and
also before the University of Berlin. As it happens, I was in
Paris a month or so after he had been there. I have always been
most cordially and hospitably received by my French friends,
but it seemed to me that when I met Raphael Blanchard he was
especially enthusiastic over my arrival. He at once invited me to
luncheon and placed himself and his laboratories at my service.
I wondered what I had done to arouse such an access of friend-
ship. It came out in the course of conversation, when he said, "I
met Colonel Roosevelt after his lecture at the Sorbonne at a
reception given him by the Faculty. When I was introduced,
I said to him, 'Colonel Roosevelt, I know Washington. I have
visited that city and I know some scientific men over there.' He
said, 'Do you indeed? Who?' 'Well,' I said, 'Dr. Howard and
Dr. Stiles.' 'Oh,' said Colonel Roosevelt. 'Fine fellows, fine fel-
lows.' " Thus Blanchard's enthusiasm on meeting me so soon
after the Colonel had been there was explained.

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It will be remembered that after this European visit, following
his African trip, Colonel Roosevelt went to London as President
Taft's personal representative at the funeral of King Edward
(May 1910).

It must have been about 1913 that I was dining one night at
Mr, Charles Francis Adams'. Mr. Henry White, ex-Ambassador
to Italy, who greeted Colonel Roosevelt on his arrival from
Africa and accompanied him on his European trip, was present.
After dinner he told a number of anecdotes of the trip. They
were all characteristic and extremely interesting, and I hope that
in his reminiscences Mr. White will tell them to the world. One,
however, I can not help jotting down here. It seems that after
the funeral, the Colonel said to Mr. White, "Well, Henry, let us
pack up and get ready to start home."

Mr. White replied, "We really must make some calls before
we leave. For example, we should pay our farewell respects to
the Kaiser" [who was then quartered temporarily in Buckingham
Palace].

"Oh, thunder!" said the Colonel. "Of course. Come, let us get
it over." So they went out, took an open barouche and drove to
the palace. They found that the Kaiser was out, so they left
their cards, reentered the carriage, and were driving away when
up came the Kaiser, also in an open carriage, with outriders.
Seeing Colonel Roosevelt, the Kaiser leaned out and said in his
excellent English, "Oh, Colonel Roosevelt, I am so glad I caught
you. Turn around and come in, and we will have a good talk."
Mr. White said that the Colonel deliberately pulled his watch
from his pocket, glanced at it and said, "Your Majesty, I can
give you just twenty minutes."

Gifford Pinchot was a warm personal friend of Colonel Roose-
velt and saw him almost daily during his Presidency. In fact,
the President publicly acknowledged that the birth of the con-

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servation idea was due to Pinchot, and that his own interest
had been aroused by his friend's efforts. One day in the summer,
meeting Pinchot and James Garfield (then Secretary of the
Interior) over in the White Lot at a departmental ball game,
Pinchot asked me to go home and dine with them informally.
I did so. Secretary Wilson was at the table and so were two or
three other men. The weather was hot, and everything was of
the most informal character, although the dinner was excellent
and the service what one would expect in such a well-appointed
house. Toward the end of the dinner Pinchot said, "I must tell
you what happened yesterday. Robert Bacon has just been ap-
pointed Assistant Secretary of State and made his first formal
call on the President yesterday afternoon. The President looked
him over and asked him if he would like to take a walk. He
said that he would. And then the President telephoned me to
come over to the White House for a tramp. I knew what that
meant. I opened the door of a closet in my office and put on a
suit of old clothes that I always keep there, then started post
haste for the White House. When Bacon saw me he said, 'Why,
Mr. President, I am not dressed for such a tramp as Pinchot and
you are going on.' But the President said, 'Never mind, come
along.' And Bacon, like the good sport he proved to be, came
along. We went down south of the White House until we got
into some waste land covered with high weeds and found our-
selves on the bank of an old canal. We looked around for a boat,
but there was none, and the President said, 'Come on, let's
swim across.' Bacon took his watch and his pocket book out
and put them in his tall hat and plunged in with the President
and myself. On the other side, the President said, 'Come on, let's
walk fast, boys, and get dry.' And so we tramped over through
Georgetown, up over the hills into the Rock Creek valley, the
President choosing a trail which he knew, and which is as stiff

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a one as could be found. We kept it up till we arrived somewhere
out near the 7th Street road. There we found horses waiting for
us, and we rode back into the city. You can imagine the condi-
tion of our clothes and how we looked. I reached home toward
dark and as I came in the front door my old Irish nurse met me.
She held up her hands and said, 'Oh, Mr. Gi£Ford, you've been
with the President again!' " Pinchot urged us not to tell this
story, but now it can be told. The President was evidently trying
Bacon out, knowing that he was a man of wealth and could
readily stand the damage to his clothes. It was not the kind of
test that would appeal to most people, but it was Roosevelt
all over.

At one time during his administration some one gave him or
the White House a beautiful grand piano. It had not been
installed very long before the Roosevelts gave one of their charm-
ing musicales. Mrs. Howard had a superb voice — a dramatic
soprano — and she was invited to be the soloist at this musicale.
I was invited to attend, but I had to leave that night for St. Louis,
where I was to give a lecture before the Twentieth Century
Club. I got ready to go to my train and stopped at the Cosmos
Club on the way to the station. Then it occurred to me that
I had time to listen to at least one song if I could arrange it. So
I left my bag at the Club and walked down to the east end of
the White House. There were numerous police. I walked up to
one who looked authoritative and at the same time good-natured,
and asked him if I could slip into the grounds and stand under
the window of the East Room to listen to my wife sing. He
didn't scratch his head, but looked as if he wanted to.

"I'm afraid it would not be allowed, sir," he said. "But why
don't you go in? You say that you were invited, and I am sure
that they would let you in."

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"But," I said, "I am not dressed. I am taking a train in an
hour. It would be very simple for me to creep up to the window
and listen."

"I understand your feelings perfectly, sir. I sympathize with
you deeply. I'd feel just the same way if my wife were singing.
But you see I have strict orders. I'll tell you what to do. The
Captain is somewhere down there" (pointing indefinitely to the
south). "Hunt him up and put the case to him." The Captain
was too far away, and of course would never have given me
permission. But the incident shows the extraordinary tact and
sympathy of at least one of the President's guard.

We all had very pleasant expectations when William H. Taft
was elected President. He and Roosevelt had been warm friends,
and we quite expected that Roosevelt's policies would be followed.
But President Taft, while a most admirable person, and greatly
liked by those who knew him best, had a different sort of mind.
He was a big, broad, genial man, but his was a legal mind. I
had hailed his election on account of his high standing, and,
incidentally, felt a bit of family pride, since it was the first time
in the history of the republic that a man of Howard blood had
reached this high office. I had met him and chatted with him at
Mr. Gardiner Hubbard's before he went out to the Philippines
as Governor-General, and I liked him enormously.

Shortly after his inauguration, I went to Europe, and on my
return to Washington, in late August, I was invited to a dinner
at the Chevy Chase Club in honor of Mr. Wickersham, who had
just been appointed Attorney-General. The hostess was Mrs.
John D. Patten, a girlhood friend of Mrs. Wickersham. Almost
every one was out of town at that time of the year, and Mrs.
Patten was the only lady at the table. Mr. Wickersham sat at
her right, and I on his right. I chatted with Mr. Wickersham

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while Mrs. Patten was engaged on the other side, and we had
a very interesting discussion of Proven9al poetry, a subject that
is a great hobby of his. He was greatly interested to know that
I had met Mistral, but the chat was necessarily very short. Before
he turned from me, he said, "How do you find things on your
return to Washington .''"

"Oh," I said, "I am greatly distressed. My dear friend Pinchot
has resigned, and my dear friends North and Newell are under
fire."

"Are they such dear friends of yours.?" said he. "Well, you
might as well understand. Dr. Howard, that this administration
is going to be a strictly legal administration." That seems to have
been at the bottom of the trouble that ensued, and certain follow-
ing events swerved my sympathy from the Taft administration,
although I still admired the President very warmly.

I think that it was during the Roosevelt administration that
I began receiving invitations to the White House functions, and
this continued until I left Washington in 1931. I mention this
here since I shall always remember the great pleasure it was to
go to the White House while Taft was there. He was such a
good fellow, so jolly, so cordial, that it made one feel good for
a week to see him and shake his hand.

In 1911-12 the American Association for the Advancement of
Science met in Washington. The opening session was held in
the large hall of the National Museum. President Taft had con-
sented to give an address of welcome. Dr. Charles E. Bessey, a
famous botanist, and at that time president of the University of
Nebraska, was president of the Association. Dr. Bessey and I
met the President at the north door of the museum. He was
accompanied by Colonel Archie Butt, his military aide, and by
other attendants, whom he dismissed. The four of us took places
on the stage, the audience of course rising as we entered. A dozen

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or more ex-presidents of the Association were also seated on the
stage. Colonel Butt was seated in the second row immediately
behind President Taft, and I sat next to Colonel Butt. In his
address of welcome the President was very happy, but I am
telling this story on account of one little incident. He said sub-
stantially, among many other pleasant and pertinent things, "I
am sure that the scientific men of Washington are very glad to
have you here, and I feel that this meeting is a great honor to
Washington. Moreover, I am sure that you are glad to come
here. Not only is it the Capitol of the nation, of which every
citizen should be proud, but it is a center of the greatest sci-
entific interest. You will be glad to see for yourselves the inner
workings of our great scientific bureaus, such as the Coast and
Geodetic Survey, the Smithsonian Institution, the Geological Sur-
vey, the U. S. Naval Observatory, and " Here he hesitated.

His memory had failed him for the moment. Obviously he
couldn't think of any more big scientific bureaus. At that time
the Bureau of Entomology was small, but I was its chief and
had its interests very much at heart. I said to myself, "Oh, if
the Bureau of Entomology were only important enough to be
mentioned right here!" Evidently there was a thought transfer-
ence, for the President resumed, "And the Bureau of Entomol-
ogy." And Archie Butt kicked me maliciously on the shins.

Years afterwards I had a chat one night in New Haven with
the ex-President, and I told him this story. It brought out his
famous chuckle, which, however, had lost some of its irre-
sistible quality after the President had lost sixty or seventy
pounds by diet and exercise.

I first met Woodrow Wilson in the early part of the century
at a supper in Brooklyn. Professor Wilson, Professor Jeremiah
W. Jenks of Cornell, and I had lectured the same evening in

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different halls before the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sci-
ences. The Hamilton Club of Brooklyn invited all three of us to
a big supper following the lectures. But one speech was made,
and that was by Mr. Wilson. I remember his opening very
vividly. He announced that he understood very well that the
members of the Club were mainly men of large affairs, engaged
in the financial whirlpool across the river. He supposed, there-
fore, that they must think it strange that he, from the little town
of Princeton, and Jenks, from the little town of Ithaca, should
have the audacity to come to Brooklyn to tell them something
about financial things.

"But," he said, "you are down striving in the middle of affairs,
while Jenks and I are in the position of men up in a balloon.
We see the perspective that you can not see."

For the same reason that I have omitted comment on four of
the Presidents under whom I have served, I shall insert nothing
more about Mr. Wilson. I met him occasionally, once upon the
golf links, and I am sure that his devotion to this game helped
to keep him fit during the long and anxious years when he
occupied the Presidential chair.

Of course I shared the general public opinion on the election
of President Harding, and my personal views concerning him
were very much like those of most people. He was a handsome,
impressive and very charming man. When I first shook hands
with him at a White House reception he gave me the feeling
that I was a man whom he was especially glad to know, and
I feel sure that he gave the same impression to all. I rejoiced
with every one else over the big international conference for
the reduction of the navies of the world, and looked upon the
newly established Bureau of the Budget with interest but also
with watchful waiting. When, however, the President called

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the first meeting of the bureau chiefs of the government, I was
enormously impressed. There on the platform were the Presi-
dent and his Cabinet, and General Dawes, the first director of
the Budget. But the audience was composed of some six hundred
of the men who had charge of the details of administration of
our great country. I realized then as never before that Presidents
and Cabinets come and go, but that these six hundred men go
on year after year and that the successful administration of the
country is largely in their hands. President Harding made the
opening speech. He was not a very impressive speaker. His voice
was monotonous, and his choice of words was far from scholastic.
His gestures were rather awkward, but his benevolent face and
fine presence carried it all ofiF.

One more little personal incident. In the thousands of pages
that have been printed about President Harding it has always
been said that not only was he a small-town man, but that, like
the small-town man, he was promiscuous in his friendships. He
had not only a genius for friendships, but an obvious desire to
be friends with every one. One day, a little after half-past four,
I was at the Cosmos Club, having just gone there from my office,
when I was called to the telephone. After I had said, "Hello," a
voice replied, "Is that Dr. Howard.? The President wishes to
speak to you." I said to myself, "The President of what?" when
Mr. Harding's fine voice said, "Good afternoon, Dr. Howard. A
friend of mine from Atlanta, Georgia, has just told me that you
refused to investigate an admirable remedy for the Cotton Boll
Weevil that he is just beginning to exploit in a business way.
Now I don't think you ought to refuse a request of this
kind."

"Why, Mr. President," I answered, "I have done nothing of
the sort. I shall be glad to have it investigated at the first oppor-
tunity. But I can't endorse it without investigation, and as it is

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now November, the cotton has all been picked and the weevils
have gone into hibernation."

"Well," said the President, "isn't there something that you can
do about it? The man is a friend of mine, and he is a fine
fellow."

"Is he there with you, sir.?"

He replied that he was, and I asked him to send the man over
to see me at the Club.

The man, a very pleasant fellow, came over and we had a talk.
I told him politely that if he would send his compound to our
laboratory at Tallulah, Louisiana, it would be tested the follow-
ing summer. It seemed to me that this was obviously a case — and
we encountered many of them in our work — in which, after the
growing season, secret compounds were rushed on the market
and were sold by the carloads before the coming season should
give a chance for a test. And so it turned out. The remedy was
a practical failure, and I believe that the man who called on me
got into financial difficulties and committed suicide the next year.

But wasn't it an excellent example of President Harding's
small-town friendliness? It was the only time in fifty-four years
of government service that a President of the United States
called me personally on the telephone.

There is one final anecdote that I must tell, since it throws an
interesting sidelight. The Secretary of Agriculture during the
Harding administration was Henry C. Wallace of Iowa. The
bureau chiefs of the Department arranged a luncheon in his
honor on his birthday. It was held in one of the big private
dining-rooms at the Cosmos Club. Thirty or forty of us gathered
at the appointed hour, and were standing at our places when
the Secretary, a little late, arrived. I was to preside at the lunch-
eon, and was standing at the end of the table next to the late
Professor Whitney. The Secretary came to his place between

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Whitney and myself, put his arms around our shoulders, and
said in a low voice, "I have been delayed at a Cabinet meeting,
and as it broke up that fine President of ours took me by the
arm and said, 'Henry, I hear that it's your birthday. Come in
here.' And he took me into the next room, opened a cupboard
and gave me a drink of the best whiskey I have ever tasted." So
much for Prohibition!

It is probably not strange that I have never met President
Hoover personally. He joined the Cosmos Club when he was
Secretary of Commerce, but I have never seen him there. I think
that his friends must have been asked not to introduce him to
people, and I judge that he is naturally a very reserved and
perhaps, even shy man. I know, however, that he is a lover of
nature, and that when he wishes to do so, he can write with very
great charm and with a pronounced sense of humor. One of the
most beautiful addresses I ever listened to was read by him at
a big dinner at one of the Washington hotels during a conven-
tion of the many societies of lovers of nature. It was on the
delights of fishing.

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Chapter XIII

L

lOTS o£ people know that there is an extraordinary institution
in Washington known as the Cosmos Club. At the present time
it has become well known among a certain class. Nowadays,
there are perhaps three other clubs in the United States that
can be mentioned in the same breath, namely, the Saint Botolph
of Boston, the Century Association of New York, and the
Bohemian Club of San Francisco. In Europe I know of only
one old club of similar standing, and that is the Athenaeum.
But, famous as it is, the Athenaeum entirely lacks the charming
atmosphere of the American clubs. It is frigid. A high standing
in accomplishment in all lines of intellectual endeavor is required
by the Athenaeum, and some of the best names in Great Britain
have been associated with it. The Saint Botolph in Boston has
somewhat similar standards, and many of the finest men in
New England have belonged to it. The same may be said of
the Century Association in New York. Artists, writers and men
of science are found there. The Bohemian Club is more catholic.
It admits actors and musicians (the Saint Botolph Club also
admits certain of the best of the Boston Symphony Orchestra),
and also certain professional and business men of culture, and,

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possibly on account of the element of theatrical people, its "High
Jinks" have become famous in America.

The Cosmos Club, however, seems to be a bit more restricted
and at the same time somewhat broader than the other three
American clubs. It primarily consists of men who have done
meritorious work in literature, the arts and in science, but it
also includes men who are distinguished in any one o£ the
learned professions or in the government service. Moreover, it
admits certain men who, although not professionally engaged
in literature, the arts or in science, are known to be highly
cultivated amateurs.

The Cosmos now occupies the old Dolly Madison house in
Washington, and several adjoining houses have been added to
it. It began in a small way about 1879, and has grown in size,
in reputation, and in facilities. At this time it has perhaps
eighteen hundred members, about half of them non-resident.

When I married in 1886, my wife, with extraordinary fore-
sight, told me that I must join this Club, and I did so at her
command. I have never regretted it. The charges were very
reasonable in those days. The entrance fee was only $50, and
the annual dues were $35, so that it was quite possible for poor
scientific men to join if they could secure election. The late
Mark W. Harrington, at one time Chief of the United States
Weather Bureau, told me once that one of his assistants had
said to him, "I have been urged to join the Cosmos Club, but
I can't afford it."

Professor Harrington said to him, "My dear man, you can-
not afford not to."

And he was quite right. The Club has done wonders for
many a young man who, having achieved some scientific prom-
inence, must work for an extremely modest government salary.

During the forty-five or forty-six years since I joined this

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extraordinary Club it has become my second home. Not only
has an endless procession o£ distinguished men, both Americans
and foreigners, passed through its doors, but the membership
itself has been not only a constant source of delight, but of the
most enormous educational value. The talk there is not always
brilliant, not always stimulating, but on the whole it is worth
more than any talk I have ever heard elsewhere. If a man sits
there chatting with a friend and some divided opinion shows
up, it has been our custom to look around the rooms a bit, and
it rarely happens that we do not find in some corner a world
authority on the subject, reading a newspaper or writing a
letter or chatting with some colleague.

What a chance for a young man who is unpolished in the
ways of the world and rather narrowly trained, but who has
done enough sound scientific work to fit him for entrance into
the Club, to broaden out and get new ideas, and even to learn
from older men how to look at his own work in a bigger way!
I have seen many a raw young man develop visibly from month
to month, even in matters of dress and personal habits. It must
be confessed, however, that the individuality of many men is
so strong that they remain unaffected, except, perhaps, in a small
way. Some of them seem even more interesting from this fact.
But the foreigners! There have been so many of them! Alex-
ander Helmholz was there once, and other great men have
made the Club their headquarters when in Washington. I have
talked there with Joseph Chamberlain, with Henry Irving, with
Lord Kelvin. James Bryce, when British Ambassador to Wash-
ington, came frequently to the Club. Jules Jusserand, when
French Ambassador, belonged to the Club for many years,
although he seldom visited it. A number of times I have met
him at receptions and have said, "Excellency, why don't you
come to the Club oftener?" and he invariably replied, "My dear

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Docteur, you see, I am so happily married." It is a pleasure to
remember that Madame Jusserand is an American.

I was secretary of the Club for many years. In fact, I have
held every office except that of treasurer. But I don't consider
that my non-election to that office is any reflection on my honesty.

I remember once when we were giving a reception to Lord
Kelvin, and I, as secretary, was introducing the men as they
approached the receiving line, General Joe Hawley came up. At
that time he was a United States Senator from Connecticut. On
being introduced, he said, "Lord Kelvin, you are a Scotsman
and a great physicist. You probably knew another Scotsman who
was also a physicist. I met him in 1876. His name was Sir
William Thomson."

"Yes," said Lord Kelvin, "I imagine that no one knows him
better than I do."

"I hope he is quite well," said Senator Hawley.

"He is quite well," said Lord Kelvin. "In fact, he is in the
same condition of robust health as I am myself." It had evidently
not occurred to the Senator that Lord Kelvin was once Sir
William Thomson.

The Club has always been marked by a sort of dignified
simplicity, but the atmosphere has been of the friendliest kind.
Men speak to each other there without introduction, and one
is sure to find every other man interesting. Some of the cleverest
things I ever heard have been said there in ordinary conversa-
tion. In fact, it is said in Washington that if one wishes to dine
well, he should go to the Metropolitan Club, but that after
dinner he should always adjourn to the Cosmos Club for con-
versation.

In the old days before Prohibition the Club was rather noted
for its safe liquors. In fact, the so-called "Wiley Scotch" was
widely known. It was named after Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, the

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great chemist and author of the Pure Food Law, who for a
long time was chairman of the House Committee. Dr. Wiley
was not only of great service to the Club in that capacity, but
he was a constant joy to all of us. I think that he was the wittiest
man I have ever known. At one period we were often invited
to speak at the same dinners, but before long I made up my
mind that it was desirable for me to speak after Wiley and not
before. The climax was reached at a dinner in New York, at
which I preceded him. Nearly all the speakers were from
Washington, and I pointed out this fact, and, since they were
all probably strangers to the diners, I told something about each
one. As to Wiley, I repeated one or two stories. When he got
up, after a few words, he said, "As to my friend Howard, I
advise him to stop his study of the Cotton Boll Weevil and
the San Jose Scale and the malarial mosquito, and to turn his
attention encirely to the Chestnut Blight." Whereupon the
audience roared at my expense so vociferously that never after-
wards did I speak before him.

Every old member of the Club must have a host of recollec-
tions of unusual and interesting people, and of unusual and
interesting conversations. One night in the billiard room I saw
a well-known zoologist and an equally well-known writer play-
ing billiards. The author was a large, heavy man, and he played
in a very deliberate way. I listened to the following conversation
between them:

Zoologist: It is surprising to me that so fine a man should be so
lazy.

Author: Do you know that I attribute my splendid physical condi-
tion at this advanced age entirely to indolence ? Lazy people and the
lazy animals always command my admiration and respect. Take the
alligator, for example. There is an ideal animal. He lies on his belly
and basks in the sun for hours upon hours. When the necessity or

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opportunity to feed comes, he goes at it in a momentary fit of energy,
swallows a fugitive negro baby, and then lies and digests and basks
in the sunlight while the barnacles gather undisturbed on his back.

Zoologist: Your combination of alligators and barnacles is an un-
fortunate one. Alligators live in fresh water, and barnacles in salt
water.

Author: You don't seem to be very familiar with the science of
geography. In the State of Chiapas in Mexico there is a place where
the salt water and the fresh water mingle, and where the alligators
have acquired a taste for brackish water, and the barnacles have
acquired a thirst for semi-freshwater, and they cohabit, the one upon
the other, in the most perfect harmony.

Zoologist: If you had told that to another man, he might have be-
lieved it, but I was born in the State of Chiapas.

Author: Then, under the new constitution of the Republic of
Mexico, adopted last month, you are a citizen of that country. What
are you doing, holding public office in the United States?

Zoologist: I would be out of place if my statement of having been
born in the State of Chiapas were not exactly the same kind of state-
ment as yours about the alligators and the barnacles.

Author: Nevertheless, I have a deep fellow sympathy for both the
alligator and the crocodile.

A bystander: After all, what is the real difference between an alliga-
tor and a crocodile?

Author: I'm not very familiar with the real structural differences,
but they have many points of resemblance. Both have low retreating
foreheads, and, consequendy, a rather inferior mentality. But each has
a different opsonic index.

Zoologist: How essential a vocabulary is to a popular writer!

Author: Yes, Doctor, that's all he needs!

Artists are not so numerous in the Club as are scientific men.
I shall speak of Frank Millet, but there have been a number
of others, some of them of quite his rank, and still others of
very considerable reputations. On September 20, 1925, I made
a note of the fact that one of the greatest living American
sculptors, Paul Wayland Bartlett, had just died in Paris. I hap-

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pened to know him slightly at the Club. I like Bartlett's work
immensely, but my opinion o£ that doesn't count. I liked him
greatly as a man, however, and that does count. Probably my
liking for him is largely due to what he said when Glenn
Brown, the architect, introduced me to him at the Club. Brown
said in his deliberate way, "Mr. Bartlett, I want to introduce you
to Dr. Howard, who has probably done as much in his way as
you have in yours."

"Oh," said I, protesting, "Mr. Bartlett has done such big
things, and I am working with such little things."

"But," said Mr. Bartlett, with his charming and clever French
courtesy, "you do it in such a big way, Dr. Howard!"

In 1915 Bartlett exhibited at the San Francisco Exhibition a
superb equestrian statue of Lafayette, with sword held aloft.
He presented a small replica (about three and a half feet tall) to
the Cosmos Club, and it was placed in the Reading Room.
One day a member was showing a visitor around the Club,
and they stopped in the doorway of this room. Dr. Henry S.
Washington, a man of striking and distinguished appearance,
was standing at a reading table, looking over the journals.
Looking at the statue, the visitor said, "Is that Washington.?"
The member, looking at Washington, said, "Yes." The visitor,
walking over to the statue and looking at the label, replied
very politely, "You're a liar. It's Lafayette." The humor of this
incident is difficult to analyze, but it is distinctly there — to an
American, at least.

I can't leave the subject of the Cosmos Club without referring
again to Harvey W. Wiley. He was a great human being. I
saw him in many places, at the Department, at scientific meet-
ings, at dinners and receptions, but most often at the Club. In
fact, he was one of my original sponsors there back in the spring

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of 1886. He will always be remembered for his great scientific
work, and more particularly for his successful labors in the cause
of Pure Food and Drugs, since he took up that idea at an
early date and labored manfully until he had achieved success.
In fact, one of my cherished recollections is a journey to Europe
on the old St. Louis in 1902, when we sat side by side, day
after day, and he talked to me at length about his plans for his
famous so-called "Borax Squad," by the aid of which he hoped
to show the exact function of borax as a preservative in canned
food and its effect upon the human system.

But it was as a highly original and very delightful humorist
that Wiley will live longest in the minds of many. I have the
impression that I knew him for ten years before I ever heard
him talk seriously. He was one continuous sparkle of humor,
and the good things that he said will be quoted for years to
come. It was not a malicious humor. As I remember it, none
of the funny things he said ever hurt anyone. And he occa-
sionally wrote very comical poetry, some of which has been
published. I am sorry that I cannot place my hands on some of
his best, but there is one amusing little thing that comes to
my mind.

Back in 1922, C. A. Jacobson, of the University of West Vir-
ginia, organized with the assistance of the chemical faculty of
the university a spelling match among the several hundred stu-
dents taking the course in General Inorganic Chemistry. It was
a public match for the spelling of chemical formula of such
compounds as are ordinarily included in a first-year college
course in chemistry. This match was described by Professor
Jacobson in the journal Science for September 29, 1922. I read
the article with interest, and sent Dr. Cattell the following note,
which was published in Science for October 20 of that year:

"Hurrah for Professor Jacobson and his chemical spelling

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match at the West Virginia University as described in Science
for September 29! Twenty-odd years' experience when perma-
nent secretary for the American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science, in reading the proofs of the programs of the
chemical section, gave me some definite opinions of chemical
terms. I was delighted in reading the preface to a book recently
published by the veteran naturalist Auguste Forel to note the
expression: "la vraie science est I'ennemi des grand mots!' Is it
a plain inference from Forel's dictum that chemistry is not a
true science?"

In Science of the next week appeared the following jingle
signed by Wiley:

Howard on Chemical Spelling

Oh, Leland, tell me, tell me true —
The explanation's up to you —
Why did you break the portals down
And jump into the Chemists' Town?
But wait a minute; now I see
To solve the riddle's up to me.
You still are in your own domain,
Where you without a rival reign.
For, as the fact appears to me,
You're trying to catch that spelling-bee.

I am sorry to record that these two bits of nonsense called
forth a rather serious protest received by the editor of Science,
which he sent to me for my opinion, remarking in his letter,
"You see what happens to the editor of an otherwise respectable
scientific journal if he once admits to its columns a bit of chaff."

During the time of the Great War, the Club was extremely
interesting. The government had brought together in Washing-

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

ton a large number o£ specialists from the university laboratories.
Naturally, they were put up at the Cosmos, and many o£ them
lived there. They were all in uniform. There were not only
many physicists and chemists, but there were also economists,
lawyers and medical men from all over the United States. And
there were astronomers and mathematicians, too. I never knew
exactly what the latter did, but they were useful. The others
did all sorts of valuable things. Many of them were so anxious
to help that they were willing do do anything. I remember
that the eminent Dr. William H. Welch, of Johns Hopkins,
disappeared from Baltimore (he was and is an old bachelor),
and his friends got worried about him. It came about that for
days he had occupied a desk outside the office door of the
Surgeon-General of the Army, and was concerned simply in
slitting open letters, until an office suitable to his extraordinary
ability was found.

As an indication of how widely the university laboratories
were represented, I was sitting in the window one day when
a college professor from Chicago approached and said, "Howard,
you know a lot about the details of management of different
universities in this country. Can you tell me what the practice
is (in such and such a situation) in, say, Harvard and the Uni-
versity of California?"

I answered that I could not tell him, but pointed out across
the room two men at the mailbox, looking for letters, and said,
"There are a Harvard professor and a California professor stand-
ing side by side. Go and ask them."

And not only was the Club crowded with men of this type.
The uniforms of the liaison officers of many of the allied nations
were seen there daily. The great dining-room on the fifth floor
was crowded, especially at luncheon. I have seen all of the

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THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST

members of President Wilson's cabinet (they were nearly all
Club members) waiting for a chance for a seat.

Along in October, 1917, we began to notice the increasing
number of uniforms of the officers of the allied armies. They
had been sent over from England, France and Italy. They were
nearly all experts in some special line, and had been sent to the
United States to assist us in our manifold preparations. Not
only were these men selected by their governments for their
skilled knowledge in branches of science whose applications to
war purposes had been discovered and enormously developed
during the previous year or two, but they were chosen also,
apparently, for their attractive personalities, and, very naturally,
for their command of the English language. The latter point
had been especially forced upon us the summer before. One
night I was sitting in the reading room of the Club, and some
man from the State Department came in and said, "Oh, Doctor,
you're just the man I want to see. You speak French. Come
and meet some of the French scientific men who have just
arrived." I went into the big reception room and found six fine-
looking Frenchmen in the beautiful French uniform, and was
introduced. Among them were Professor Henri Abram, of
Paris; Professor Fabbri, of Marseilles; the Due de Guiche, a
famous amateur physicist of Paris; and three others whose
names I have forgotten. Dr. Henry S. Washington and I kept
up a somewhat laborious conversation with these men in the
French language until, at the expiration of an hour or two, it
gradually dawned on us that they all spoke English much better
than we did French.

Along in October I happened to be talking at luncheon at
the National Museum with Austin H. Clark, a Harvard gradu-
ate, and a well-known oceanographer, who had travelled all
over the world. At that time he was possibly thirty-five years

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FIGHTING THE INSECTS

of age. We spoke of the charming ItaUan and English officers
whom he had met recently (he speaks Italian and Russian).
I told him that I had met a number of these men in little
groups at the Club, and together we hatched out a plan to
bring them all together at an informal reception with the ambas-
sadors of the different allied countries. Invitations were sent
out at our suggestion by the Board of Management of the Club
on the 29th of October (the last of the wet Monday nights in
Washington under the provisions of the then new Prohibition
Act, which went into effect November ist). The different allied
ambassadors had been invited to bring with them their Embassy
staffs, and all of the expert officers and members of commis-
sions in town.

The reception was largely attended. Perhaps two hundred
members of the Club were there, and possibly a hundred of the
Allies, together with other guests holding cards. The officers
wore their medals and decorations, and it was as brilliant a
reception as I have beheld since the Court reception in Vienna
in 1907. But only one of the ambassadors was there, and that
was Sato of Japan. Spring-Rice, of Great Britain, had gone to
Canada to attend a wedding, the Italian ambassador was sick,
and Jusserand had another pressing engagement. But a number
of the attaches were present, and there were many military men,
representing Italy, France, Russia, and England.

It had been a question of some doubt in my mind as to
whether any of the German-American members of the Club
would turn up. As a matter of fact, I saw only one of them
there, Professor Schmidt, of the Congressional Library, a very
pleasant man, and probably a pro-Ally. I don't know.

The house committee had provided a very good buffet supper,
with plenty of strong rum punch, and, after a litde initial stiff-
ness, things warmed up, and the crowd stayed in animated talk

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until midnight, I introduced myself to Colonel Mizukuchi of
the Japanese Army, who knew a lot of my Japanese friends,
and who in turn introduced me to Captain Nomoura of the
Japanese Navy, and also to Baron Sato. I met, as well, the Russian
Lieutenant-General Vladimir Roop; the Italian General Gugli-
elmotti and the other Italian officers, General Tazzi, Captain
Count Enrico Luserna di Campigniole, and Baron Balentini.
The Frenchmen I met were Colonel Martin, Captain Rostand,
Lieutenant Patern