Vol. XLVIII. LONDON. MARCH, 1916 No. 3 



FRANCIS MARION WEBSTER. 



Canadian Entomologists had long regarded Mr. F. M. Webster 

 as one of themselves, and the mutual warm friendship and sym- 

 pathy grew with years. His sudden death in Columbus, Ohio, 

 on Januar\- 2nd came, therefore, as a shock to those of us who 

 enjoyed his friendship and benefited by his ripe experience. It 

 was my good fortune to sit with him during the joint "smoker" 

 of the Association of Economic Entomologists and the Entomo- 

 logical Society of America at Columbus, Ohio, after my address 

 on the evening of December 29th, and he left me, laughing in his 

 usual happy manner, to retire for the night. A few hours later 

 pneumonia suddenly developed, and it ran a fatal course with 

 astonishing rapidity. 



Although he was born in 1849, in Lebanon, N. H., and had 

 led a strenuous life, his mind was active, his zeal for the extension 

 of his work was stimulating and his broad grasp of the details of 

 his work was undiminished. He belonged to, and was one of, the 

 most worthy of that splendid class of older workers in economic 

 entomology to whom our science owes ;^o much, both by their 

 example and by the thorough character of much of the work they 

 have bequeathed to us. 



His first official position was that of Assistant State Ento- 

 mologist of Illinois in 1882, and he brought with him the rich 

 experience of a keen observer and a practical agriculturist, a mental 

 equipment which always impressed itself upon the character of 

 his subsequent work. From 1884 to 1892 he served as special 

 field agent to the United States Department of Agriculture, and 

 it was largely while working in this capacity that a large part of 

 his best original work was eft'ected. From 1886 to 1890 he was 

 engaged on his well-known investigations in the valley of the 

 lower Mississippi River on the buffalo gnats and their suppression. 

 In 1888 he visited Australia in company with Koeble, who was 

 seeking the natural enemies of the citrus fluted scale, and he also 

 paid visits to Tasmania and New Zealand. His work on the 



