FIGHTING THE INSECTS 



novels open on the table beside him. As I came in, Mrs. Carter 

 put her finger to her Hps and said, "Be quiet, the Colonel is 

 composing a great speech." 



I should like to tell more about the Carters, for the type was 

 new to me, and was most interesting. My education as to people 

 was beginning. But this is the story o£ an entomologist rather 

 than of a Northern boy who was meeting Southerners for the 

 first time. 



The next morning (it was the thirteenth of November, 1878) 

 I walked down 13th Street to the old building of the Department 

 of Agriculture on the Mall, which, it will be remembered, shut 

 ofif all the north and south streets between the Monument and 

 the Capitol, except Four-and-a-half, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, 

 Twelfth, and Fourteenth. It was an ugly, old, red-brick, mansard- 

 roofed building of the architectural style not uncommon at that 

 period, and, although not large, it housed the whole Depart- 

 ment. The Weather Bureau had not yet been added to the 

 Department, and was still under the control of the Signal Service 

 of the War Department, and, in fact, the Department of Agri- 

 culture comprised only a division of Chemistry, one of Botany, 

 one of Microscopy, one of Statistics and one of Seed Distribution. 

 Of these the latter was by far the most important. On the second 

 floor there was a museum which contained principally models 

 of fruit (especially apples) which had been made by and were 

 under the charge of the former entomologist, Townend Glover. 

 I found the Division of Entomiology in two rather large rooms 

 and a small hall-room at the west end of the Museum. I have 

 called it the Division of Entomology, but as a matter of fact it 

 was not called a "Division" until some years later. 



I have told the story of those early days in my "History of 

 Applied Entomology" (Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 

 vol. 84, 1930) . Professor Riley was then thirty-five years of age. He 



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