FIGHTING THE INSECTS 



paternal grandfather, Dr. Calvin Howard of Delhi, was an 

 amateur astronomer and founded a local Natural History So- 

 ciety in the 1840's. Moreover, my maternal great-grandmother 

 was Lois Pickering, coming from the famous Pickering family 

 of Massachusetts, in which there has been, here and there, a man 

 of science, notably the late Professor E. C. Pickering of Har- 

 vard, the noted astronomer and member of many foreign scien- 

 tific academies, and Dr. Charles Pickering of Philadelphia (of 

 the class of 1826 at Harvard), who was prominent in the early 

 days of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. He was 

 greatly interested in the geographical distribution of plants and 

 animals, and travelled much.^ 



Other instances of this sort are lacking as far as I know. Even, 

 however, had there been no ancestry of scientific accomplish- 

 ment, it is the most natural thing in the world that a boy brought 

 up in the Central New York environment should be attracted to 

 nature, and many of my boyhood friends were so attracted. But 

 that I happened to be the only one who followed one aspect of 

 nature study as a pursuit was more or less accidental. 



Ithaca is at the head of a beautiful lake, and is in a valley sur- 

 rounded by hills, except on the lake side, and these hills in my 

 time were rather well-wooded. The boys rowed and sailed on 

 the lake, camped in the woods in huts that they made of poles 

 and the dense foliage of the hemlock, and fished in all the trib- 

 utary streams. Some of them collected birds' eggs and studied 



* Lacking near ancestors of scientific attainment, I have been a little more 

 fortunate with men who have come into the public eye in other ways. Jacob M. 

 Howard, United States Senator for Michigan, and one of the founders of the 

 Republican Party, was my grandfather's first cousin. General O. O. Howard, of 

 Civil War fame, belonged to the same line. The former President and Chief 

 Justice, William Howard Taft, was rather proud of his middle name, which is that 

 of his grandmother, who was a cousin of my grandfather. The present Secretary 

 of State, Henry L. Stimson, by the way, is my mother's grandnephew. 



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