chapter V 



W 



T V h: 



HEN I was told in June, 1931, that the great Capper Award 

 had been made to me, largely because o£ my special interest in 

 promoting that side of "natural control" that depends upon the 

 work of parasitic and predatory insects, I began to wonder to 

 just how much of the credit I was really entitled. It is true that 

 I had made many investigations concerning Hymenopterous 

 parasites and had begun the study of a limited but important 

 group as early as 1879. This happened in a perfectly natural way. 

 When Professor Comstock was at the Department of Agriculture 

 at Washington, in 1879, we were rearing certain insects in order 

 to learn their life histories, and in doing this we reared many 

 parasites in our breeding cages. There was no one in the United 

 States who had studied any of these creatures except E. T. 

 Cresson who had described many of our Ichneumon flies. The 

 smaller Chalcis flies of this country were practically unknown. 

 So I took up their study and began to describe new species. In 

 1880 I wrote a paper describing the parasites of the scale-insects, 

 to accompany Comstock's report on these important plant ene- 

 mies. In the introduction to this report I pointed out the ease 

 with which such parasites could be carried from one point to 

 another to help in destruction of the pests in places where para- 



[90] 



