FIGHTING THE INSECTS 



arrived in Syracuse early in the evening, wandered about the 

 streets, homesick for the German tongue, and presently found 

 himself before a chapel where he heard German spoken by the 

 people passing in. So he, also, entered the church. Behold! he 

 was back in the religious atmosphere. He spoke (in German, of 

 course) to the young man who sat next to him, found him agree- 

 able and went home to spend the night with him at his boarding- 

 house. The young man had no job, and when, on the next 

 morning, while walking together through the streets, they saw a 

 recruiting station, they both volunteered, adding their names 

 to the first three hundred thousand recruited for the war. So, by 

 the irony of fate, twenty-four hours after he landed, he found 

 himself back in both the religious and warlike atmospheres. 



At the end of the first three months, the enlistment having 

 expired, Pergande's new found friend went back to New York, 

 but the immigrant, with characteristic perseverance, stuck to 

 the army for the full four years of fighting. At the end of the 

 war he was discharged at St. Louis, and, having no other trade, 

 went into the big gun works there. He had always been an 

 amateur entomologist, collecting butterflies and beetles and such 

 things, and on one of his Sunday afternoon collecting rambles 

 he met Otto Lugger, then Riley's assistant. Lugger was about 

 to resign and recommended his friend for his job. So Pergande 

 stayed with Riley, and came with him from Missouri to Wash- 

 ington in 1878, where he remained until the time of his death 

 in the early 1900's. 



I was much interested in letters on the subject of Spiritualism 

 published from time to time in the English journal Nature, espe- 

 cially those that appeared in 1926 and 1927. Possibly this interest 

 was intensified by the fact that my esteemed friend, Dr. Robin 

 J. Tillyard of New Zealand and Australia, entered the field on 



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