THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST 



In 1928 the Fourth International Congress o£ Entomology 

 was held at Ithaca, New York. The Zurich Congress of 1925 

 had selected the United States as the country for the 1928 

 Congress, had elected me president, and had left the choice 

 of the exact locality to a small committee of Americans. We 

 discussed the availability of New York, Boston and Philadelphia, 

 and finally decided upon Ithaca, not only because that place 

 is easily reached from the seaboard, but because the buildings 

 of Cornell University are wonderfully adapted to the holding of 

 big congresses in the summer time, as had been demonstrated the 

 previous year at an international congress of botanists. Then, too, 

 it was judged that the temperature in August at Ithaca would 

 probably be somewhat lower than that at Philadelphia or New 

 York, Pittsburgh had also been considered as a meeting place, 

 largely on account of the existence there of the great Carnegie 

 Museum, of which the distinguished entomologist. Dr. W, J. 

 Holland, had so long been the director. 



Although the weather was very warm on some of the days 

 of the meeting, the Congress was a great success. The Ameri- 

 cans, especially the Cornellians, had reason to be proud. Un- 

 doubtedly the experience of the previous summer with the 

 Botanical Congress had made the local people more efficient 

 in their arrangements than they might otherwise have been, 

 for it is impossible to point out a single point in which they 

 failed. All of the foreign delegates left in a very enthusiastic 

 frame of mind. There was a large attendance of entomologists 

 from the United States and Canada, as was to be expected, 

 and it was the first international gathering that many of these 

 men had seen. I think that nearly all of them left Ithaca with 

 the firm resolve that they would never miss another international 

 congress. This is one of the many proofs of the international 

 value of such gatherings, of their helpfulness in bringing about 



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