WHOLE VOL. APPLIED ENTOMOLOGY HOWARD 93 



Riley and upon his ability to concentrate upon his work. Almost 

 everything was turned over to his principal assistants. He made me 

 coeditor of Insect Life and allowed me to attach my name as co-author 

 to several large yearbook articles which I had written. Riley took 

 long journeys to Europe and to the West Indies, and toward the 

 end of the administration became more interested in ])olitics than he 

 had ever been before. 



At the autumn elections of 1892 the Democrats came back into 

 power by the reelection of President Cleveland. Riley had been a sup- 

 porter of Cleveland, and called on him in New York soon after the 

 election. He told me that at that time he urged the President-elect 

 to appoint Hon. Sterling J. Morton of Nebraska (an old friend of 

 Riley's) Secretary of Agriculture, and that he felt that Morton if 

 appointed would make him Assistant Secretary in charge of all sci- 

 entific work of the Department. When Secretary Morton came to 

 Washington in March, 1889, Riley gave a large reception in his 

 honor at his beautiful house on Washington Heights, and invited all 

 of the prominent men of Washington to meet him. He fixed the 

 time at the annual meeting in Washington of the National Academy 

 of Sciences, so that very many of the most prominent scientific men 

 in America were present. These strenuous attempts to impress the 

 Secretary had the opposite result from that expected. Dr. Charles W. 

 Dabney, a prominent chemist, later President of the University of 

 Tennessee, was appointed Assistant Secretary. Riley was very much 

 displeased, showed his displeasure in tactless ways, and in May, 1894, 

 was allowed to resign, greatly to the relief of the Secretary. 



Doctor Dabney, the Assistant Secretary in charge of scientific 

 work, had been prejudiced by enemies of Riley, and I think must 

 have been partly responsible for making matters disagreeable for 

 him. At all events, when the resignation had been accepted. Doctor 

 Dabney, at the request of the Secretary, began to look into the matter 

 of a successor to the post of chief of the entomological service (then 

 rated as a Division of the Department). 



Since I had been first assistant for a dozen years, I naturally 

 expected promotion, but there seemed to be an obstacle. The Assis- 

 tant Secretary told me that he had been so impressed by certain un- 

 fortunate characteristics of Professor Riley that he feared, since I 

 had been his " loyal " assistant for so long, that I was probably the 

 same type of man. He told me that he was going to make inquiries, 

 and in fact he wrote to some of the leaders in entomology and asked 

 them to tell him whom they considered best fitted for the place. 

 Among others, he wrote to S. H. Scudder, A. S. Packard, A. J. Cook 



