HISTORY 3 1 



When the Bussey Institution was reorganized in igo8 for graduate 

 work and research, I was appointed professor of entomology. A year 

 later Charles Thomas Brues was added to the staff as instructor. 

 During the following years, till 1929, when the Bussey Institution was 

 merged with the Arnold Arboretum and we joined the Zoological 

 Department and Museum in Cambridge, a considerable amount of 

 research, especially on Hymenoptera (the Parasitica by Brues and 

 the social Aculeata by myself), was undertaken and a number of 

 young investigators trained as teachers and as economic entomolo- 

 gists. We also conducted during the second semester of each year, 

 in Cambridge, general entomological courses designed primarily for 

 graduate students. 



The importance of entomology has been recognized in the develop- 

 ment of the School of Public Health at the Harvard Medical School 

 by the appointment of two assistant professors. For some years 

 courses on insects as vectors of human and animal diseases were 

 given by Professor Brues at the Bussey Institution, but in 1923 Dr. 

 Joseph Bequaert took over this instruction as a member of Dr. Rich- 

 ard Strong's Department of Tropical Medicine, and more recently 

 Dr. Marshall Hertig has been giving similar instruction on the insect 

 parasites of domestic animals in Dr. Ernest Tyzzer's Department of 

 Comparative Pathology. Dr. Bequaert, who has contributed much 

 to our knowledge of the Vespoid Hymenoptera, Diptera and other 

 insects, is also an active member of both the Zoological and Museum 

 staffs. 



The preceding brief historical sketch shows that there has been at 

 Harvard University not only an uninterrupted occupation with 

 entomological teaching and research since the close of the eighteenth 

 century, but also a continuous increase in these activities commen- 

 surate with those in other departments of zoology and all other 

 natural sciences. In other words, the importance of entomology has 

 been fully recognized without the undue exaggeration that has at- 

 tended its development in some other American universities. Owing 

 to the extraordinary number and variety of insect forms, entomolo- 

 gists have often shown a tendency, especially as occupants of profes- 

 sorial or official positions, to exaggerate the significance of insects as 

 distinguished from the many other existing and extinct animal types. 

 Not only has this tendency been noticeably absent among the teach- 



