THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST 



Theophile Gautier was not aware o£ any relationship. The car- 

 load of flowers, by the way, was carried to the Convent of 

 Sacre-Coeur in Angers, and given to the Mother Superior for a 

 novice who was the daughter of one of my colleagues in the 

 United States Department of Agriculture. 



To go back to the parasite importations. After I had engaged 

 Fritz Wagner in Vienna, and E. Schlopfer in Dresden (the latter 

 on the advice of Dr. Heller), I went to Switzerland and looked 

 up Dr. Herbert Haviland Field, the Director of the Concilium 

 Bibliographicum Zoologicum, who at once introduced me to one 

 of his principal helpers, Fraulein Marie Riihl, who was a com- 

 petent entomologist, and through whose services the United 

 States surely profited greatly. Her father had started a small but 

 well-known journal, called Nature Novitates, which she had 

 carried on after his death. She therefore knew by correspondence 

 very many collectors, especially in Switzerland, Germany and 

 Austria, and for a number of years was able to assemble thou- 

 sands of parasitized Gipsy Moth larv2 and Brown-tail nests 

 in Zurich, where she packed them uniformly and sent them on 

 to Massachusetts. 



Miss Riihl carried on this work successfully until the outbreak 

 of the Great War. I saw her in Zurich in 1925. She was still 

 working for the Concilium, which, after Dr. Field's death, had 

 been taken over by the Swiss government with the financial aid of 

 many foreign organizations. I learn that since then Miss Riihl 

 has died. She was a fine woman and a useful one. She will always 

 be remembered by the force in Washington. 



But this was by no means all we did in Europe before the 

 war in this particular investigation. As early as 1907 I went out 

 into Russia. I had corresponded with Professor N. Porchinsky 

 of the Ministry of Agriculture at St. Petersburg, and he had 



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