194 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 84 



laboratory of the United States Bureau of Entomology in the La- 

 gunas district. It might be worth while also to mention that I was 

 myself arrested in Cordoba while collecting insects at night on the 

 white wall of a building under an arc light. I had climbed up on a 

 barred window to reach a highly placed specimen, when I was caught 

 by the police and carried off to the cuartel. I showed my specimens 

 and tried to explain, but without effect. I had met the Jefe Politico 

 in the morning and had his card in my pocket. When I produced it, 

 they sent for the high official, who liberated me with apologies and who 

 later gave nic an official document entitling me to the freedom of the 

 city and the right to collect insects anywhere. The point of the whole 

 episode was that the building on which I was climbing was the prin- 

 cipal bank of the town. 



Shortly after this last visit to Mexico the serious revolutionary 

 troubles began that resulted in the overthrow of the Diaz administra- 

 tion and in a long period of great unrest in which administration 

 followed administration. At this distance I have during these years 

 been confused as to conditions in the neighboring republic although 

 from time to time men connected with the Department have gone 

 down there on one mission or another. I have been fully aware, 

 however, that important movements in applied science have taken 

 place, and just now (April, 1930) I have been placed in possession 

 of a comprehensive statement drawn up at my request by Dr. Alfons 

 Dampf, on the basis of which I have constructed the following para- 

 gra]:)hs. Many of the sentences are in Doctor Dampf's own words, 

 and 1 thank him very heartily for his sympathetic courtesy. 



There seems little doubt that both the Aztecs and the Mayas 

 suffered from locust invasions. Among the Mexican antiquities, stone 

 carvings of grasshopi>ers are occasionally found, and the beautiful 

 presidential residence near the City of Mexico bears the name Chapul- 

 tepec which means " grasshopper hill." Therefore, primitive applied 

 entomology was evidently of pre-Columbian origin. At the time of 

 the conquest by Cortez, the Spanish writers, Hernandez, Sahagun, 

 Clavijero, and others, give data concerning insects gained from the 

 Indians. The famous Father Antonio Alzate, after whom the well 

 known scientific society of Mexico is named and who died in 1795, 

 observed the pulsation in the dorsal vessel of a caterpillar and pub- 

 lished an extensive work on the cochineal. Great collections of insects 

 among other objects of natural history were made in Mexico during 

 the past century, and particularly when the great work by Godman 

 and Salvin was carried out, resulting in the publication of the famous 

 " Biologia Centrali-Americana." The entomological parts of this work 



