FIGHTING THE INSECTS 



then in the employ o£ the Bureau, who was especially apt in 

 rearing insects, and he did a great deal of the work in the actual 

 breeding of the specimens. When I came to publish the paper, 

 which, by the way, was rather lengthy, I called especial attention 

 to Mr. Pratt's work, and, as I thought, treated him rather hand- 

 somely. Many years later, however, after his death, I learned that 

 he had complained to certain other people that I had not treated 

 him justly and that he should have been the joint author of the 

 paper, although, as a matter of fact, he had nothing to do with 

 its planning, wrote not a word of it, and did not appreciate its 

 importance until he had read it. 



Comstock, who had not been married long, was building a 

 little house on the Cornell campus. He got leave of absence from 

 the University and came to Washington, where he worked peace- 

 fully and successfully for two years. His salary as entomologist 

 was, I think, two thousand dollars a year. His wife was appointed 

 a clerk, and was given twelve hundred dollars a year. They lived 

 economically in rooms on F Street, ate at restaurants with very 

 reasonable prices (in those days a good dinner cost twenty-five 

 cents), and saved as much money as possible to help meet the 

 payments on the little house building at Ithaca. We lived on 

 terms of the greatest intimacy, ate together, and at least once 

 a week went to the theater. They met the financial demands 

 from Ithaca so carefully that when we wanted to go to the 

 theater it was frequently necessary for me to pawn my watch 

 to buy the tickets. I believe that Professor Comstock had no 

 watch to pawn. 



We worked very ardently, and I wrote many papers, some of 

 them based on careful, original investigation. Much to my dis- 

 comfort, Comstock cheerfully assumed the authorship of these 

 papers, and I entered no protest. I had worked up two of them 



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1 



