THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST 



as a basis for a thesis for a Master's degree at Cornell, but when 

 Professor Comstock asked me to let him publish them in his 

 Annual Report, I consented, and thus their titles do not appear 

 in my personal bibliography. But I enjoyed the work, and we 

 published in Comstock's Annual Report some excellent articles 

 about the life histories of several important crop pests. 



It was then that I first became interested in parasitic insects, 

 and I will tell how this came about when I come to write about 

 the subject of natural control by parasites and predators. The 

 study of these little creatures and of their extraordinary inter- 

 actions fascinated me. It is an interest that has continued all my 

 life. Comstock, at that time, thought that he had tuberculosis, and 

 I believe that he did have it in an incipient form. He was thin 

 and pale, coughed frequendy, and I often noticed that his hand- 

 kerchief was spotted with blood. He thought it necessary to go 

 to Florida in search of a milder winter climate, and it was there 

 that he began his study of the scale-insects, which proved to be 

 of great value, and which soundly established his early reputa- 

 tion. Much of his material was sent to Washington, and from 

 it issued many parasites. I studied these, named, described them, 

 and published my first big paper over my own name under the 

 title "Report on the Parasites of the Coccidae," etc. 



It is interesting to remember that while the Comstocks were 

 south I made my first field trip. A planter at Portsmouth, 

 Virginia, who was growing a large acreage of timothy grass, 

 sent to Washington an appeal for help against the army worm, 

 which was threatening the complete destruction of his crop. I 

 boarded a Potomac boat and went down to Portsmouth by night, 

 and then by carriage out through the swampy region to the 

 plantation. It was then that I had my first sight of the true 

 Southern negro. It happened to be Saturday, the big market day 

 in Portsmouth, and I met hundreds of colored families in their 



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