OF WASHINGTON, VOLUME XVIII, 1916 79 



FRANCIS MARION WEBSTER. 



BY L. O. HOWARD. 



Francis Marion Webster was born at* Lebanon, New Hamp- 

 shire, August 2, 1849. He was son of J. S. and Betty A. (Riddle) 

 Webster. He married Maria A. Potter, of Sandwich, Illinois, 

 August 21, 1870. He was Assistant State Entomologist of 

 Illinois, 1882-4; Special Agent, U. S. Department of Agricul- 

 ture, 1884-1892; Entomologist of the Ohio Agricultural Experi- 

 ment Station, 1891-1902; an assistant on the Biological Survey 

 of Illinois, 1903-4; after which he was appointed to a position 

 in the Bureau of Entomology, U. S. Department of Agriculture, 

 in charge of Cereal and Forage Crop Insect Investigations. 

 He was Professor of Economic Entomology in Purdue Univer- 

 sity 1885-88, and Consulting Entomologist of the Indiana Ex- 

 periment Station 1888-1891. He was sent on a mission to the 

 Melbourne, Australia, International Exposition by the U. S. 

 Departments of State and Agriculture in 1888, visiting other 

 portions of Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand, returning in 

 1889. He was engaged during part of the years 1886-1899 in the 

 solution of the problem of the suppression of the buffalo gnat 

 in the valley of the lower Mississippi River. He was a Fellow 

 of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 

 and of the Indiana Academy of Science. He was a member and 

 ex-president of the Ohio Academy of Science, the American 

 Association of Economic Entomologists and the Entomological 

 Society of Washington. He was a member of the Biological 

 Society of Washington, the National Geographic Society, the 

 American Society of Naturalists, and the Geological Society of 

 Iowa. He was an honorary member of the Entomological So- 

 ciety of Ontario and a corresponding member of the Cambridge 

 Entomological Club and the New York Entomological Society. 



This is the brief statement, practically as it appears in Who's 

 Who in America, concerning the career of our fellow member, 

 who died at Columbus, Ohio, January 3, 1916. Since his death 

 three biographical sketches have been published; the first by 

 Mr. W. II. Walton, one of his principal assistants, in Science, 

 February 4, 1916 (Vol. XLIII, No. 1101), the second by Prof. 

 S. A. Forbes, with whom he was formerly associated in entomo- 

 logical work, published in the Journal of Economic Entomology 

 for February, 1916 (Vol. 9, No. 1), and the third by Dr. C. Gor- 

 don Hewitt, Dominion Entomologist of Canada, in the Canadian 

 Entomologist for March, 1911). 



The writer was so close to Webster, who has left us so recently, 

 that it is difficult to view his life in perspective, yet it is per- 



