WHOLE VOL. APPLIED ENTOMOLOGY HOWARD 25 1 



In 1875 a Station of Agricultural Entomology was founded in 

 Florence, and Targioni was made the first Director. From that time 

 on. a stream of publications on different aspects of economic ento- 

 mology was published by him and his assistants. 



He was one of the founders of the Italian Entomological Society, 

 and in 1891 he started the Revista di Entomologia Agraria which con- 

 tinues to this day. The Station issued also a large number of pam- 

 phlets, and in 1891 published a large and useful volume entitled "Ani- 

 mals and Insects of Growing and Dried Tobacco." 



With the assistance of Dr. G. Del Guercio and Dr. A. Berlese, 

 he conducted a very elaborate series of experiments with insecticides, 

 mainly against the Coccidae but also against injurious insects of other 

 groups, and in 1888 published, in collaboration with Berlese, a very 

 large treatise on the general subject of insecticides. 



When I came to Washington, in 1878, Targioni was already an 

 economic entomologist of high repute. Professor Comstock's inter- 

 est in Coccidae, which began in 1879, led to a careful study of Tar- 

 gioni's published work as well as of that of Signoret ; and a little 

 later I began an independent correspondence with Targioni. He 

 was looked upon as the foremost exponent of economic entomology 

 in Europe until the time of his death. 



About this time, F, Franccschini, Curator of the Italian Society 

 of Natural Sciences, wrote a useful little book entitled " Noxious 

 Insects" {" GH Insetti Nocivi"), published in 1891 as one of the 

 Manuali Hoepli. It was well illustrated, and in its 263 pages consti- 

 tuted a good summary of applied entomology as practiced in Italy. 



In 1902, I visited Italy for the first time. Targioni had just died. 

 His position at Florence had not yet been filled. I landed at Naples 

 and immediately made the acquaintance of Antonio Berlese and his 

 assistant, F. Silvestri, at the Royal College of Agriculture at Portici, 

 some miles from Naples in the direction of Vesuvius. The visit 

 aroused great enthusiasm in my mind for Berlese and his work. He 

 was a man then in his early forties, who had, as just indicated, been 

 an assistant to Targioni-Tozzetti in Florence, and who had compara- 

 tively recently taken the new position of Professor of Entomology 

 in the Agricultural College in the South. He was a man of enormous 

 energy and indefatigable industry. He had been working taxonomi- 

 cally on the Acarina and was spreading out over the whole field of 

 economic entomology. His salary was only 2,000 lire a year (less than 

 $400). The means at the disposal of his department were almost 

 nothing. He made his own drawings and lithographed and printed 

 them with his own hands. Both he and Silvestri worked night and 



