APPLIED ENTOMOLOGY — HOWARD 389 



llie cankerwoiin. lie followed, in the early years of the nineteenth 

 century, with several papers on various injurious insects. 



In 1841, Dr. ThaiUleus William Harris, librarian of Harvard 

 College, published a report on '' Insects injurious to vegetation in 

 Massachusetts." It was a scholarly work, and it treated of many 

 plant-feedin<:^ forms. There was no mention of any critical danger, 

 and the remedies suggested were little more than of the old Scotch 

 gardener type. 



A few years later (1853) Townend Glover received an appoint- 

 ment in the Bureau of Agriculture of the United States Patent 

 Oflice. One of his numerous duties was " to collect information on 

 insects." 



The next year. Dr. Asa Fitch of New York was authorized by 

 the New York State Legislature to examine insects, "especially 

 those injurious to vegetation,'' and ihus became practically the 

 lirst State entomologist. He published a series of reports from that 

 time until 1872. They were full and careful reports, and in them 

 he described the life histories of many important species but brought 

 out nothing striking in regard to methods of control. 



Benjamin Dann Walsh, a trenchant writer on entomological 

 subjects, was acting State entomologist of Illinois in the year 18G7. 

 He was a man of high culture, broad- view.s, and a prophetic mind. 

 He was especially and harshly critical of many of the remedial 

 measures then in vogue, and was particularly keen in his criticisms 

 of the fake remedies that were then being foisted on the public and 

 as a matter of fact are still being advertised from time to time. 

 Referring to such so-called remedies, one of his phrases sticks in 

 my mind : " Long live King Humbug ! He still feeds fools on flap- 

 doodle ! " He published but one report, although he had previously 

 been an associate editor of a journal, published in Philadelphia, 

 called " Tiie Practical Entomologist," and later was associate editor, 

 with C. V. Riley, of The American Entomologist, a journal devoted 

 largely to practical matters in entomology. 



In 1878 Glover was retired from the position of entomologist 

 to the Ignited States Department of Agriculture, and Charles Val- 

 entine Riley was made his successor. Riley served until 1804, with 

 the exception of the years 1879 and 1880, during which period John 

 Henry Comstock (before and afterwards professor of entomologv 

 at Cornell University) held the position. 



The work done by Riley and Comstock in the De])artment of Agri- 

 culture was of the highest type. Riley had previously served as 

 State entomologist of Missouri from 18G9 nntil 187G and had pub- 

 lished nine reports, admirably illu.strated and very sound, whicli 

 did much to show the importance of careful woik. These Missouri 

 reports are full of notable things and from the jiractical point of 

 2bUD5— yi 2(i 



