THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST 



and Professor Riley sent me down to investigate. At Huntsville 

 I met the editor of the local newspaper, who introduced me to 

 a number of charming gentlemen with various titles, such as 

 Judge, General, Senator, and so on. They treated me with the 

 most perfect courtesy, and gave me the highest opinion of the 

 Southern gentleman. The insect outbreak was, of course, a 

 temporary one, and has probably never been repeated down 

 there since. But it gave me a very emphatic opinion of the 

 value of natural enemies. At one point the marching army of 

 caterpillars had met a rather deep railway excavation, and had 

 fallen in by the millions, so as to cover the rails and fill the 

 excavation to a depth of several feet. Such a sanguinary scene 

 I have never met with since. Carnivorous ground beedes, preda- 

 tory bugs, Tachina flies. Ichneumon flies, and other predators 

 and parasites had flown in, evidently from many miles around, 

 and were either feasting upon the caterpillars, or laying their 

 eggs in or or their wriggling bodies. 



Similar things have been noticed by other observers, but no 

 one has yet explained how these carnivorous insects discover 

 from long distances the presence of the food in such profusion. 



While I am thinking of the South, I remember that there was 

 another trip during this same general period. There was an 

 international celebration called The Cotton Exposition, that was 

 held in New Orleans in 1884-85, and I was sent down by 

 Professor Riley to install a rather elaborate exhibit illustrating 

 applied entomology. John Boutelle of the Coast and Geodetic 

 Survey, who knew New Orleans well, gave me a letter of 

 introduction to Victor Bero, who kept a delightful little French 

 restaurant on the Rue Bourbon. While Americans who liked 

 French food went there, the clientele was largely French, and 

 French was the predominant spoken language. There were not 



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