80 PROCEEDINGS ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



fectly obvious that his career was so useful and so well rounded 

 that many important lessons can be learned from a study of its 

 steps and from a general consideration of his character. 



In the first place he was a farmer's boy, and not trained in the 

 schools, yet, by his ability and originality and his clear, practical 

 mind, he accomplished work of the highest character, organized 

 a strong branch of the government service, directed the investi- 

 gations of men of the highest college training, had strong clear 

 ideas as to the direction and aim of college courses in science as 

 applied to agriculture, and was often consulted by teachers in 

 arranging and developing such courses. This statement alone 

 indicates that we are dealing with a most unusual character. 



It is probably the fact that he was a farmer's boy that ac- 

 counts for the turning of his mind to entomological study, and 

 the practical side immediately appealed to him from the fact 

 that his father died when he was fifteen years of age. He mar- 

 ried at twenty-one, and a few years later bought a farm in his 

 home county in Illinois (Dekalb County). On his farm he 

 studied the injurious insects and began to collect beetles. 



His first published articles appeared in the Chicago Weekly 

 Inter ocean for 1874 and consisted of six weekly installments of 

 notes on some of the common injurious and beneficial insects, 

 under the general heading "Entomology and Agriculture." His 

 more serious publishing career, however, began in 1879, in the 

 columns of the Prairie Farmer. His earliest papers relate to the 

 herbivorous habits of certain carabids, and, after several notes 

 on this subject published in different issues of the journal, he 

 brought out, in Bulletin No. 3 of the Illinois State Laboratory 

 of Natural History (November, 1880), a paper entitled "Notes 

 upon the Food of Predaceous Beetles," which attracted very gen- 

 eral attention and indicated quite plainly to the few of us who were 

 then interested in such studies that a new and very careful ento- 

 mological observer had entered the field. This paper showed care 

 in the search of the literature, admirable powers of observation, 

 familiarity with the insects studied, and an unusually strong 

 literary style. 



From this time on until the time of his death Webster's bib- 

 liography covers rather more than six hundred titles. 1 It is 

 true that very many of these titles are short newspaper articles 

 published in the Ohio Farmer, the American Agriculturist and 

 other agricultural journals, but it is also true that very many 

 others contain the results of original observations and many of 

 them have a broad character. 



1 See Bibliography of the more important contributions to N. A. Ento- 

 mology, S. Henshavv, Nathan Banks, U. 8. Department of Agriculture, 

 parts IV-VIII, et seq. 



