84 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 84 



nient but as the sole creator of an agricultural museum, from 1855 

 until 1878, with the exception of a few years during and just after 

 the Civil War when he resided and worked at the Maryland Agricul- 

 tural College at College Park, Maryland. We have seen how he was 

 assisted during the closing years of his work by Charles Richards 

 Dodge, and that F. G. Sanborn, of Massachusetts, was employed 

 tci prepare for the Department of Agriculture an entomological ex- 

 hibit for the Philadelphia Centennial of 1876. We have also seen 

 that Glover was succeeded in June, 1878, by C. V. Riley. 



The summer of 1876 had been one of the years of very great dam- 

 age to cotton by the leaf caterpillar, Alabama argillacca, or, as it was 

 then called, Aletia argillacea. Immediately on taking office, Riley had 

 been appealed to by southern planters for an investigation of this 

 insect and he had J. H. Comstock of Cornell University appointed 

 as a field agent and sent him into the field at Selma, Alabama. It also 

 happened to be a yellow- fever year, and Comstock was really in con- 

 siderable danger in the south, but he stuck to his work and turned in 

 a good report in the autumn. As Professor Riley needed an office 

 assistant, he asked Comstock on his way south whether he had a 

 graduate student at Cornell who would like to take the post, and 

 Comstock recommended the writer who at that time had just finished 

 a year's postgraduate study preparatory to medicine at Cornell Uni- 

 versity. In the course of time the appointment was made, and I 

 reached Washington November 12, 1878. I stayed overnight with 

 a college friend on F Street near Thirteenth Street, and on the morn- 

 ing of November 13 walked down Thirteenth Street to the old 

 Department of Agriculture Building which at that time stood alone 

 in the great park south of Pennsylvania Avenue. There was a lily 

 pond just inside the entrance to the grounds. The park was well 

 grassed, with undulating surface and with small trees grouped accord- 

 ing to their botanical classification. Rows of small ginkgo trees had 

 been planted two years before bordering the main driveway. The 

 ugly, red brick, mansard-roofed building was very much in evidence, 

 and there were greenhouses immediately to the southwest by west, 

 the space occupied by the present West Wing being planted with an 

 orchard of small Siberian apple trees. 



I found that the entomological work was being done in two rooms 

 on the second floor of the west end of the building, the large north- 

 western room being filled with floor-cases with flat tops carrying the 

 collection of injurious insects prepared by Sanborn two years before. 

 I entered this room, finding it apparently unoccupied, but after walk- 

 ing around between the cases I found over in the north window a very 



