72 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL.84 



Comstock, however, although an inexperienced speaker, made his 

 talks very interesting, since he combined the attractive sides of ento- 

 mology with the practical side in a rather remarkable way. He was 

 very conscious of the fact that he was not well informed, and he 

 desired to improve himself in every way. To do this in Ithaca was 

 impossible, except by reading. He had already started a good library 

 which, of course, later became very strong. Even in those early days, 

 however, his students were able to consult Reamur, Lyonnet, West- 

 wood and other classic and standard books. In his few spare weeks 

 he went away from Ithaca to try to broaden his field. I remember 

 that he went to Yale, and one of my first impressions of that insti- 

 tution came from a story that he told me, that he tried to get lodging 

 in a certain boarding house and was refused because he was not going 

 to work in the college but in the Sheffield Scientific School. I do not 

 know how long he stayed at New Haven, but he went to Cambridge 

 for a short time and studied with Hagen. One of his favorite stories 

 of Hagen has been retold by Escherich on his book on " Die ange- 

 wandte Entomologie in den vereinigten Staaten." Every morning, 

 Hagen came into the laboratory, said good morning cordially, took 

 off his coat and hung it on the door, unbuttoned his vest, seated him- 

 self at a little table, stuck a large German pipe in his mouth, puflfed 

 some clouds of smoke into the air, and said " Gumni now, I vill dell 

 you zome dings vot I know." 



Hagen had been brought over to Harvard by Agassiz in 1870 and 

 was probably the earliest regular teacher of entomology only, al- 

 though Harris years before had given certain lectures to voluntary 

 students while he was Librarian at Harvard. All of the other teachers 

 of entomology had been teachers of general natural history which 

 included all of botany and zoology and usually also geology. Com- 

 stock's own title, in fact, was at first Instructor in Invertebrate Zool- 

 ogy and Entomology, although his main attention was always given 

 to entomology. 



I have said in the opening paragraph of this section that in 1872 

 the teaching of economic entomology was about to begin. Strictly 

 speaking, this is true, since the entomology that had been taught pre- 

 viously was not really economic except in a way. W. D. Peck is sup- 

 posed to have given some lectures at Harvard in the earlier years ot 

 the last century, and Harris, while Librarian at Harvard, had a pri- 

 vate class in entomology after 1831 ; and the teachers of natural his- 

 tory (there were very few of them) undoubtedly included insects in 

 their curricula. 



