FIGHTING THE INSECTS 



at universities and others before all sorts of organizations, and 

 I have grown to enjoy it. For many years I have not felt a trace 

 of embarrassment before an audience. This lecturing, however, 

 has not been frequent enough to interfere with my official work. 

 In fact, it has helped very much to make it better known, and 

 incidentally it has helped the family in its yearly expenses — not 

 much, but enough so that it has counted. 



By this time I had become interested in the carriage of disease 

 by insects, and about the beginning of the century I gave many 

 talks before medical societies, city improvement associations and 

 health organizations about this important subject. 



Among the most interesting and surely the most remunerative 

 of the lectures I gave were those before the Lowell Institute in 

 Boston in the early spring of 1902. I had heard much of the 

 Lowell Institute and had read many of the lectures given there 

 by famous men and was therefore immensely flattered and de- 

 lighted when dear old Dr. William T. Sedgwick, the Curator of 

 the Institute, wrote me with Mr. Lowell's consent and asked me 

 to give eight lectures on Economic Entomology. I don't know 

 how those lectures are carried on nowadays — possibly in much 

 the same way — ^but in those days they were held in one of the 

 old buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on 

 Berkeley Street. The audience had to be seated at eight o'clock, 

 for the doors were then locked and the lecture began. At nine 

 o'clock the doors were unlocked, and people could leave whether 

 the lecture was finished or not. I suppose that the time tables of 

 suburban trains accounted for this regulation, but it took a 

 mighty interesting lecture to keep people there after nine. 



My lectures were illustrated by very good lantern slides, and 

 in the eight I covered all of the field of Economic Entomology 

 that was known at that time. I remember that the first one was 

 on the subject of the carriage of disease by insects. Mr. and 



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