6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I37 



mosquitoes swarmed in the rainy season, on the islands that were 

 without human inhabitants there were no diseases for the arthropods 

 to transmit. 



Zoologically the archipelago is noted for the differentiation of spe- 

 cies on the different islands. Collections from the trip went to Stan- 

 ford University and were distributed to specialists whose papers were 

 published in the Proceedings of the Washington Academy of Sciences 

 and other journals. Snodgrass individually or with Heller authored 

 seven papers (3, 5, 6, 7, 12, 16, and 19). Edmund Heller became a 

 noted collector of mammals and later accompanied Theodore Roose- 

 velt on his African Expedition. 



In 1 90 1 Robert E. Snodgrass was graduated from Stanford Uni- 

 versity with an A.B. degree, and took a teaching job at the State Col- 

 lege of Washington in Pullman under Prof. C. V. Piper, an enthusi- 

 astic entomologist and botanist at that time, later an agrostologist in 

 the U. S. Department of Agriculture. During the summer vacations 

 Snodgrass, with two companions, two horses, a wagon, and camping 

 equipment, explored the central desert of the area, then as nature had 

 left it, and traversed the Grand Coulee before it was "dammed by a 

 dam." 



After 2 years at Pullman, he returned to Stanford University as 

 an instructor in entomology under Professor Kellogg. Here he made 

 his first acquaintance with honey bees in an observation hive. This 

 initial interest was sustained and led to his intensive studies of honey 

 bees (23, 50, 76). During the period at Stanford (1903 to 1905) he 

 added 11 publications (9 to 19) to his rapidly lengthening bibliog- 

 raphy. However, it seems that the authorities were not too pleased 

 with the young instructor, mainly on minor accounts. For one thing, 

 Professor Kellogg was in Europe, and in his absence it was the duty 

 of Snodgrass to feed some newly hatched silkworms in the laboratory. 

 The larvae, of course, had hatched ahead of the season outdoors, and 

 vainly he searched the campus for mulberry leaves. (This was before 

 it was known that the larvae would eat lettuce.) At last he found a 

 single tree with young leaves, climbed the tree, picked the leaves, 

 and saved the lives of the experimental silkworms. The tree, however, 

 refused to put out more leaves and inconsiderately died. It was in a 

 row of shade trees in front of the men's dormitory, and thus rated in 

 importance ahead of silkworms. After some other minor indiscretions 

 of a similar nature, Snodgrass went to San Francisco, jobless, to 

 brush up on his drawing. 



In San Francisco he obtained a job in the art department of an 

 advertising company and attended an art school at night. He did 



