82 PROCEEDINGS ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



insects affecting this class of crops, and the results of his work 

 down to 1903 are admirably displayed in Bulletin No. 42 of the 

 Division of Entomology, entitled "Some Insects Attacking the 

 Stems of 'Growing Wheat, Rye, Barley, and Oats, with Methods 

 of Prevention and Suppression." In this admirable bulletin, 

 which contains a very large amount of matter of biological and 

 practical interest, he told for the first time over his own signa- 

 ture the story of the discovery of dimorphism and alternation of 

 generations in Isosoma. He also in this paper gives much atten- 

 tion to the Dipterous enemies of the stems of grains, and years 

 afterw r ards was able to station Dr. J. M. Aldrich, as a part of his 

 force, in a field near the place of his old observations, to attempt 

 to follow out life histories which he himself had been obliged to 

 leave incomplete. In fact, it may safely be said that cereal and 

 forage crop insects was Webster's own field. 



Aside from work in this direction, perhaps the most notice- 

 able work which he did was that upon Simulium in the Missis- 

 sippi bottomlands, and, in a paper which he read at the twenty- 

 fifth annual meeting of the Society for the Promotion of Agricul- 

 tural Science, he covered in a very excellent way a field well 

 expressed in the title of his paper, " The Suppression and Control 

 of the Plague of Buffalo Gnats in the Valley of the Lower Mis- 

 sissippi River and the Relations Thereto of the Present Levee 

 System, Irrigation in the Arid West and Tile Drainage in the 

 Middle West." 



Webster was instrumental in the calling of the first convention 

 for the consideration of a national horticultural quarantine law, 

 and in fact was the originator and promoter of the movement 

 which resulted in the convention of nursery-men, horticulturists, 

 entomologists, and plant pathologists which was held in Wash- 

 ington, D. C., March 5 and 6, 1897. Although no legislation fol- 

 lowed this convention, yet as a direct result the original bill was 

 framed and introduced into both branches of Congress, and after 

 a prolonged effort of nearly fifteen years resulted in the final 

 passage of the Federal Horticultural Law in August, 1912. 



All the time that Webster was working on these intensely prac- 

 tical questions he carried in the back of his head an intense 

 interest in insect life entirely aside from its economic aspects, 

 and the latest paper which he wrote (not yet pir lished) dealt 

 with the interesting topic of ethno-entomology, which was read 

 in part at Columbus by Doctor Felt the morning aft CM- its author 

 was stricken with the fatal attack of pneumonia which resulted 

 in his death four days later. This manuscript, the hundred or 

 more entomologists who were present at that Hireling may be 

 interested to know, has been offered to the Bureau of American 

 Ethnology, and, if they find it impossible to publish it, it will be 



