riora of MichigiVi. STiiin' at Michigan 27 



Smith's specimens of insects to Professor Cook, and tlie professor 

 supplied valuable information concerning some of them. Occa- 

 sional communications passed between Cook and Smith for at 

 least t\vo years. 



In 1867 Albert John Cook, professor of zoology and ento- 

 mology at the college, had begun the first formal course in any 

 American college, devoted exclusively to the study of insect pests 

 and supplemented by collections of specimens. ■** Lectures and 

 some previous instruction had been given earlier by C. V. Riley 

 whose nation-wide reputation had been gained while State Ento- 

 mologist of Missouri by reason of his efforts to stop the spread of 

 the Colorado potato beetle during the 1860's from the Rocky 

 Mountain plateau regions to the central and eastern states. He 

 studied the life histories and habits of insects and the insecticides 

 which might be used to exterminate them. The ravages of the 

 Colorado potato beetle were controlled by a substance known as 

 Paris Green which was dusted on the plants or the pests. Scientific 

 agriculture now included economic entomology in the study of 

 diseases of crops. The value of insecticidal applications was being 

 studied in Europe and a comparatively untried field was being 

 opened to demonstrations here. Riley, Cook, John Henry Corn- 

 stock of Cornell University, B. H. Mudge and Edward A. Popenoe 

 of Kansas, Burrill of Illinois, and many other able men began to 

 build this useful science into the fabric of scientific American 

 agriculture. In 1876 a United States Entomological Commission 

 was appointed to study Rocky Mountain grasshoppers and, under 

 Riley's leadership, published notable volumes on Rocky Mountain 

 locusts and cotton insects, some incidental papers, and a volume 

 on forest insects by A. S. Packard. During the 1850's Townend 

 Glover had served the United States Commissioner of Patents as 

 the first federal entomologist. In June 1878 Commissioner of 

 Agriculture William G. LeDuc appointed Riley chief of the 

 Division of Entomology of the United States Department of 

 Agriculture, and in his office was employed another scholar who 

 was to become one of America's foremost entomologists, Leland 

 O. Howard. Entomologist Riley reported that year that, since 

 taking office, he had "more particularly" concerned himself with 



^* Herbert Osborn, Fragments of entomological history including some personal 

 recollections of men and events, published by the author, 95-97, 103, Columbus, 

 Ohio, 1937. 



