424 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 84 



During the reign of the Emperor Dom Pedro II, the country 

 awakened to an appreciation of appHed science, and many students 

 were sent to the United States to study engineering and other branches. 



Possibly the earliest investigation in economic entomology was 

 made in 1870 when B. Pickman Mann, of Cambridge, was sent to 

 Brazil with personal letters of introduction to Dom Pedro from 

 Louis Agassiz. He was given a commission to investigate the zoology, 

 entomology, and botany of Brazil. He selected his own field of work, 

 studied coffee and maize insects for five months and prepared a report 

 on each topic. I do not know that these reports were ever published 

 by the Brazilian Department of Agriculture, but Mr. Mann, after his 

 return to the United States, published in the American Naturalist an 

 interesting account of some of his observations upon cofifee insects. 



In 1880, John C. Branner, afterwards famous as a geologist and 

 who succeeded David Starr Jordan as President of Stanford Uni- 

 versity, was sent to Brazil by the United States Department of Agri- 

 culture, largely to investigate the occurrence in that country of the 

 famous cotton moth (Alabama argillacca). He was accompanied by 

 Albert Koebele. On his return he prepared two reports. The first 

 was entitled " Preliminary Report of Observations upon Insects In- 

 jurious to Cotton, Orange, and Sugar Cane in Brazil." It appeared 

 on pages 63-69 of Bulletin No. 4, Division of Entomolog>s United 

 States Department of Agriculture, 1884. The second was entitled 

 " Cotton Caterpillars in Brazil," and was published in the Fourth 

 Report of the United States Entomological Commission (1885). 

 From this expedition Koebele brought back a very interesting collec- 

 tion of insects of economic importance including very many Hymen- 

 opterous parasites which he reared from the different cotton cater- 

 pillars. 



In 1880, Dr. Hermann von Ihring, a German by birth, and a 

 zoologist of broad accomplishments, at the age of 30 left a position 

 in Leipzig and went to Brazil. After various experiences he became 

 head of the Natural History Museum in Sao Paulo and started early 

 work in economic entomology, publishing at the same time papers in 

 other departments of zoology. His son, Rudolf o, acted as his assis- 

 tant and published several joint papers with his father. During the 

 World War, like all other Germans in government employ, the elder 

 Von Ihring was discharged, and in 1920 went back to Germany where 

 he died February 24, 1930, at the age of 79. While in Brazil, he had 

 as early as 1882 begun to study the leaf -cutting ants, and he published 

 a somewhat extensive paper on this subject in 1894. In 1898 he 

 published a study on the injurious insects of the Jabota tree. Later 



