FIGHTING THE INSECTS 



advice, I suggested that if he wanted to help the French gov- 

 ernment one of the best things he could do would be to buy 

 the property at Menton which the Ministry of Agriculture was 

 then occupying as an Insectarium. (It has long since been sold.) 

 Again I received no answer. At the time I considered this very 

 discourteous and made up my mind that Sir Basil was a good 

 deal of a fraud. Now it seems to me that he was pulling too 

 many wires in very great things to bother about corresponding 

 with a chance American, even though he had been brought 

 to his place by one of the distinguished men of science of 

 France. 



An episode that I shall never forget concerns itself with Dr. 

 Nicolas Cholodkowsky, an eminent Russian entomologist, who 

 was almost equally famous in his own country as a poet. He was 

 professor of zoology in the military school at St. Petersburg. I 

 had long known him by correspondence, and fortunately we 

 had exchanged photographs. Unfortunately, however, I missed 

 him on the occasion of my visit to St. Petersburg in 1909. 



After the Second Revolution in Russia (I think it must have 

 been in 1920) I received a letter from Cholodkowsky, written in 

 Riga. It must have been sent by hand across Siberia and mailed 

 in Japan, since the envelope bore the Tokio postmark and a 

 Japanese postage stamp. In this letter he told me that he had 

 lost his post and his pension, and that he was in dire financial 

 difficulty. He must have been about sixty-five years of age at the 

 time (perhaps a bit younger) but said that he felt that he had 

 ten good working years before him, and that he wanted to work 

 in some other country. Could I get him a post in the United 

 States? It was an intensely interesting letter, and I was anxious 

 at once to have him in the United States, since his published 

 work had been of so high a character. A post under the Federal 



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