170 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL.84 



position in entomology. In 1900 he became an assistant in the Iowa 

 State Agricultural College. During the years 1897 and 1898, while 

 still in Nebraska, he acted during those two summers as Special 

 Agent for the United States Department of Agriculture and made 

 investigations upon the Rocky Mountain locust in dififerent parts of 

 the West. In the spring of 1901 he was again made Special Agent 

 and put in charge of work against the cotton boll weevil in Texas. 

 From that time until his death in October, 1925. he remained in charge 

 of this vitally important southern work. With the establishment of 

 the Section of Southern Field Crop Insects, he was put in charge of 

 this section, and later was also charged with the work on insects 

 affecting man and animals. He built up a large force of excellent 

 assistants, at first at Victoria, Texas, and later at Dallas, Texas. He 

 made an extraordinary record during his nearly quarter of a cen- 

 tury in the South and made a remarkable impression upon the people 

 of the Southern States. He spent much time in travel throughout the 

 South, and was in W^ashington at frequent intervals. With Doctor 

 Marlatt and Doctor (Juaintancc, he made an advisory committee of 

 three to consider the work of the Bureau as a whole. He was a 

 sound entomologist, with great breadth of view, and possessed 

 the all-important characteristic of impressing people whom he met 

 with his ability and his sound and careful judgment. At his untimely 

 death in 1925 many of us realized for the first time the extraordinary 

 number of friends he had made in the South and his great influence 

 in the development of economic entomology in that important section 

 of the country. 



A. F. Burgess was born in 1873, and graduated at the Massachu- 

 setts Agricultural College. He was an Assistant Entomologist to the 

 Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture from 1895 to 1899, Assis- 

 tant Entomologist to the Illinois State Agricultural Experiment Sta- 

 tion in 1899 and 1900. and Inspector of Nurseries and Orchards in 

 Ohio in 1900 to 1902 ; then Chief Inspector and later Assistant Ento- 

 mologist in the Federal Bureau of Entomology. His work in the 

 Bureau from the start was in New England, and he made his way 

 up in the service rapidly until in 1916 he was placed in charge of 

 the i^roject entitled " Preventing Spread of Moths," which included 

 only the gipsy moth and the brown-tail moth. This was one of the 

 largest projects of the Bureau and carried the largest appropriations. 

 It developed rapidly under Mr. Burgess' hands, and sound investiga- 

 tions were carried out of many new aspects of the problem. He 

 became known as one of the soundest and most reliable of the Ameri- 

 can economic entomologists ; was for many years the Secretary of the 



