FIGHTING THE INSECTS 



crowded, and many of the most prominent members were 

 actively engaged in war work. But Pittsburgh offered itself as 

 a meeting place and urged us to come. We finally accepted, and 

 as Dr. Eliot had been elected president, largely since a new section 

 of education had been established, I notified him of the decision. 

 He wrote me that he thought it would be very unwise for him 

 to accept. He was then seventy-nine years old, and the following 

 year, when he would have to make his address as retiring presi- 

 dent, he would be eighty. We used some sound arguments, and 

 he finally accepted. I naturally saw much of him at the Pitts- 

 burgh meeting and during the following year. 



When he arrived at Pittsburgh he was apparently in vigorous 

 health. I asked him how he had spent the summer, and he rather 

 startled me by replying that he had largely occupied himself 

 with rowing and bicycling. He did his duty at Pittsburgh almost 

 more than conscientiously, and introduced certain features that 

 were new. He conceived it to be his duty as president to pay 

 a visit to each one of the many sections — a capital idea, which 

 I had seen carried out in the British Association for the Ad- 

 vancement of Science. 



The new section of agriculture was founded at this time. Dr. 

 Eliot attended the first meeting, and of course was called upon 

 to speak. We were all in a state of great excitement about the 

 war, and his remarks, beginning naturally with a consideration 

 of the necessity for intensive agriculture in our country in the 

 existing emergency, went on into other features of the great 

 conflict. He was very bitter against the Germans and spoke at 

 some length concerning the alleged Belgian atrocities that were 

 then reported luridly in the newspapers. During his speech four 

 German professors who, while they had not been interned here, 

 had been caught in the United States and were unable to go 



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