WHOLE VOL. APPLIED ENTOMOLOGY HOWARD 87 



Philosophical Society of Washington in 1880. And this was not 

 often, since Riley was more prominent in the organization than was 

 Comstock, and the first meeting of the Society was held at the for- 

 mer's house. 



When Comstock came to Washington his health was poor. He 

 feared tuberculosis of the lungs. After a fit of coughing, I often 

 noticed that his handkerchief, when he removed it from his lips, was 

 blood-stained. During the summer that followed his appointment, he, 

 Pergande and I worked enthusiastically on the different insects that 

 were brought to our attention, with Mrs. Comstock doing clerical 

 work and George Marx preparing illustrations. There resulted from 

 this work a very good reix)rt that contained a number of rather im- 

 portant articles, some of which have a decided interest today. I wrote 

 most of the articles in this report, basing many of them on the care- 

 ful laboratory rearing notes made by Pergande. The article on the 

 clover seed midge in this report seems to me to be especially signifi- 

 cant, since, after studying the life history of the insect and after 

 gaining full information as to clover cropping methods, I was able to 

 make one of the earliest recommendations as to a slight variation 

 in cropping methods, the adoption of which rendered this particu- 

 lar insect no longer dangerous in eastern clover fields. 



The remedy for the grapevine flea-beetle proposed in this report 

 is also one of my ideas, the beneficial effect of which I proved 

 experimentally. And the rather full articles on the oak leaf-miners I 

 prepared from my own notes and they were at first intended as a thesis 

 for a master's degree at Cornell. 



The articles in the report in which Professor Comstock took the 

 greatest personal interest and upon which he personally did the most 

 work were those upon " The Frustrating Retinia " and " The Pitch 

 Pine Retinia." and also the one on " Predaceous Lepidopterous 

 Insects." 



Moreover, all through the summer we worked upon a report on 

 cotton insects, a subject in which Professor Comstock was espe- 

 cially interested on account of his engagement the previous sum- 

 mer by Riley to work in the cotton fields of Alabama. This re- 

 sulted in the publication of the " Report on Cotton Insects " in the 

 late autumn of 1879.^ 



' In the meantime Riley and his assistants were working on a report on the 

 same subject, which was subsequently published as the Third Report of the 

 United States Entomological Commission. As it happens, I wrote much of each 

 of these reports, among other chapters, those on the natural enemies of the cotton 

 caterpillar. In the interval between the publication of these two reports, I changed 

 my mind about the function of the so-called Phora alctiae and had the somewhat 



