WHOLE VOL. APPLIED ENTOMOLOGY HOWARD 89 



can begin to realize the unrest of those days and how it affected the 

 efficiency of most employees. Nor, indeed, can one today realize 

 how many utterly incompetent persons were given clerkships and 

 other official positions. It must be said, however, that strictly sci- 

 entific men were rarely discharged. Nevertheless, Comstock, know- 

 ing Riley's enmity, feared the event that really occurred ; although, 

 with his Cornell professorship to fall back upon, it was not a mat- 

 ter of so great concern to him as it was to me. 



About the first of February, 1881, a wealthy traveling English- 

 man, passing through Washington, accidentally made the acquain- 

 tance of Professor Comstock and myself, and told the former that 

 he would like to take me with him as far as New Orleans and pos- 

 sibly further. As it happened, the Department had received requests 

 from Louisiana for information concerning damage by insects to 

 sugar cane. There was no money available, and so the opportunity 

 offered by the Englishman (Mr. T. U. Brocklehurst) was grasped, 

 and I was able to spend the following month investigating the sugar 

 cane root-borer (Li gyrus rugiceps) up the Bayou Teche and the 

 cane borer on the old Wilkinson plantation (Magnolia) down the 

 river south of New Orleans. Mr. Brocklehurst wanted me to go 

 on to Mexico with him, but fearing the results of the change of 

 administration, I returned to Washington. 



Immediately upon the inauguration of President Garfield, the Hon. 

 George B. Loring of Massachusetts, a former Member of Congress, 

 was appointed Commissioner of Agriculture, and he was at once 

 deluged with letters from all over the country — from individuals, 

 from farmers' organizations, from Masonic organizations, and from 

 Civil War veterans' associations — urging him to reappoint Profes- 

 sor Riley at the head of the entomological service. Commissioner 

 Loring was unable to resist this widespread appeal, and in conse- 

 quence Riley was appointed Entomologist, and Comstock went back 

 to Cornell with an allowance of one thousand dollars for one year to 

 complete his work upon the scale insects. 



Professor Riley brought E. A. Schwarz back with him. Commis- 

 sioner Loring insisted upon the appointment of Benjamin Pickman 

 Mann, of Cambridge, as an assistant, and he also insisted on the 

 appointment of Miss Mary G. Champney ^ as a clerk. Riley also had 

 appointed Dr. W. S. Barnard, who had occupied Professor Com- 

 stock's chair at Cornell during his absence and who had also done 

 some work for the United States Entomological Commission the 

 previous summer on machinery for use against the cotton caterpillar. 



' Miss Champney remained in the service until 1927, retiring on account of age. 



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