THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST 



And now I think I must say something about the Century 

 Dictionary. About 1885, when the Century Company was plan- 

 ning its great dictionary, they appointed Dr. EUiot Coues as 

 Zoological Editor. He was one o£ the foremost men in the public 

 eye at that time. He looked about for illustrations, and was 

 recommended to use the beautiful woodcuts belonging to 

 Professor Riley, which the latter had made to illustrate his 

 Missouri reports. He had been wise enough to have them done 

 at his own expense, so that he still owned the original blocks. 

 The Century Company paid him a large price for electrotypes 

 of these blocks, and he sold them with the proviso that he 

 should write the definitions of the words so illustrated. During 

 the winter of 1885-86 he worked a little at these definitions with 

 the assistance of E. A. Schwarz and myself, and when he went to 

 Paris as die representative of the Department of Agriculture at 

 the French Exposition of that year he told me to go ahead and 

 finish up the definitions for him and to help Dr. Coues out in 

 any way I could. It was evidently his understanding that he was 

 to remain the entomological contributor of the dictionary, and 

 that I was to receive only perfunctory acknowledgment if any. 

 I called on Dr. Coues shortly after Riley's departure, and found 

 him in Dr. Theodore Gill's room in one of the towers of the 

 Smithsonian Institution. I turned over to him some definitions 

 of words illustrated by the Riley cuts, but he stopped me as I 

 was going out of the door and asked me whether I had written 

 them myself or whether Riley had. I told him that I had done 

 them after Riley's departure, and he remarked that evidently I 

 was just the man he was looking for. He told me he knew Riley 

 had no knowledge of many things that a dictionary man should 

 know, and he asked me if I would take over the entomology on 

 my own account under him. I said that I would, and I did all 

 of the entomological definitions from that time on. 



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