46 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



NECROLOGY. 



Prof. Charles Valentine Kiley, lionorary curator of tlie department 

 of insects in the United States National Museum, died September 14, 

 18!>5, 



The following is an extract from a biographical sketch by the Assist- 

 ant Secretary, read at the annual meeting of the Joint Commission of 

 the Scientific Societies of Washington, January 18, 189G, and afterwards 

 published in Science:' 



Professor Riley was born in Chelsea, London, September 18, 1843. His schoolboy 

 (lays were passed in France and Germany, and he was but 17 when his restless spirit 

 led him to America. 



" He went West and settled with Mr. G. H. Edwards, whom he had met in London 

 and who had made arrangements to open a stock farm in Kankakee County, 111. 

 Here, during three years, he accjuired that experience of Western agriculture that 

 can be gained only by farm work. Fond of all life as manifested on the farm, young 

 Riley devoted himself enthusiastically to the calling he had chosen. Of an inquiring 

 and experimental turn of mind, he aimed to improve on the methods in vogue, and 

 soon won the esteem of all who knew him; and, though so young, was sought for in 

 couu.sel and honored at public gatherings, at which he became intimate with Emory 

 Cobb and other prominent farmers of Illinois. Under these circumstances, and with 

 a deep love of nature in all her manifestations, it was no wonder that Professor 

 Riley, as we have heard him avow, looked back to the farming days in Illinois as the 

 happiest of his life. 



"Tlie exi)erience gained on the farm enabled him, more than anything else, to 

 understand the ])Osition and needs of the farmer. In writing of Professor Riley's 

 farm life and the reasons why he abandoned it, a Kankakee friend who knew him 

 well remarks: 'Young Riley was simply too enthusiastic and too bent on excelling 

 in everything. He took no rest. Often he would be up, actually getting breakfast 

 ready, to relieve the women folk, and milk half a dozen cows, before the others were 

 about. When others were resting at noon in the shade, he would be working at his 

 flowers under a .July sun. There was not a sick animal of the three hundred on 

 the place that he did not understand and help. He kept a lot of bees, got hold of 

 the best bred colts, and some of the best heifers in the county, secured a good 

 quarter-section, and 8i)ent his Sundays reading, sketching, and studying insects. 

 Three years of this unceasing effort under the trying climatic extremes of central 

 Illinois broke the young fellow's health, for it was a great contrast to his previous 

 life, and with every one telling him that he was wasting his talents, he finally con- 

 clnded to give up the idea of farming. But had his health not failed him, my opinion 

 is that he would be a farmer to-day, and a successful one too, for he has intense 

 love of rur.il life.' 



"He went to Chicago in his twentieth year, with no definite trade or profession 

 and with little experience of city life. Money was scarce among farmers in those 

 days, and his little property was so invested that it was not available. The trials 

 of liis first few months in Cliicago are familiar to only a few of his intimate friends, 

 but the manner in whieli he overcame them while yet in poor health was character- 

 istic. Pride prevented him from asking help from his Kankakee friends, but did 

 not prevent liim from donning blue overalls and doing manual labor in a pork- 

 packing establishment, or from adding to his slender income by making portraits of 

 fellow boarders, or sketches which he himself disposed of at evening in the abodes 

 • >r wealth on Michigan avenue. After a while he obtained an engagement as a 

 reporter on the Evening Journal, but finally became connected with the Prairie 



' Vol. Ill (N. S. ), No. .59, 1896, pp. 1-8. 



