98 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 84 



Horticultural Board, taking on the extremely important and onerous 

 duties of that position. All through his career he has shown himself 

 clear-headed, able, and versatile to a degree. He early made a mark- 

 in taxonomic work by his fine studies in the Coccidae and in an 

 important group of the Tenthredinidae. He traveled extensively 

 and got an early world-view of economic entomology. His practical 

 and fertile mind has been constantly at work in the solving of big 

 problems, and no man could be better fitted by ability and experi- 

 ence to conduct the affairs of the now very large Bureau of F.nto- 

 rnology. 



In the summer of 1891 Frank H. Chittenden was appointed. He 

 had been a prominent member of the Brooklyn Entomological Society 

 and the editor of its publications. He had been educated at Cornell 

 University, studying under both W. S. Barnard and J. H, Comstock. 

 Although a coleopterist, he had a broad knowledge of insects and 

 filled an important niche in the service. Later he became a man of 

 prominence and built up a large branch of the service. His many 

 articles and reports showed great care and minute knowledge. It is 

 probable that no one had a greater knowledge of the insects affect- 

 ing truck crops in the United States than did Chittenden. 



One of the most interesting members of the force in the early days 

 was Albert Koebele. He was born in Germany in 1852 ; came to this 

 country when a young man, and at the time of his appointment he was 

 living in Brooklyn where he was a member of the Brooklyn Entomo- 

 logical Society. In the winter of 1881 Riley attended a meeting of 

 that Society and was greatly impressed by the beautiful condition of 

 certain specimens exhibited by Koebele. He offered him an appoint- 

 ment, which Koebele accepted, and he came to Washington early in 

 1882. He became at once an extremely valuable office worker and a 

 still more valuable field man. He was sent to the South to make obser- 

 vations on the cotton caterpillar and related species, and in November, 

 1882, went to Brazil with the late John C. Branner largely to inves- 

 tigate cotton pests, with the Brazilian origin of the cotton caterpillar 

 distinctly in mind. The expedition returned in 1883, and the results 

 of Koebele's work as shown by the specimens he brought back were 

 marvelous. He remained in Washington two more years, and then, 

 after an unfortunate love affair, asked to be transferred to some dis- 

 tant place. He was sent to California where he conducted a series 

 of very interesting studies and where he performed many experi- 

 ments with different washes against the white, or fluted, scale of the 

 orange. W'hile he was engaged in this work Riley succeeded in trac- 

 ing the origin of this scale and learned from one of his correspondents 



