240 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 9 



about twenty-five hundred named species of insects. The spirit in 

 which he thus entered upon his long career of pubhc service is shown 

 in his letter of acceptance, in which he says : "I am not aiming to make 

 money by just so much work for so much pay. I shall throw into the 

 work all the zeal and thought fulness at my command; and as to the 

 Laboratory, I feel hke a partner in that already." 



With the practical union of the Illinois State Entomologist's Office 

 and the State Laboratory of Natural History in July, 1882, Webster 

 became virtually an assistant to the State Entomologist; and the first 

 published product of his work in this new relation was an article on 

 the Angoumois grain-moth and its parasites, printed in the Twelfth 

 Report of the Entomologist's Offifce. 



In the summer of 1884 he was appointed to the United States service 

 as field agent of the Division of Entomology under Riley, and was 

 assigned for investigation the subject of the wheat insects, on which 

 he had already made a substantial beginning. Studjdng first in 

 Illinois, he was presently sent to Oxford, Ind., and thence to La Fayette 

 in the fall of 1884. Here he made his headquarters for seven years 

 as a special agent of the United States Department and nominal en- 

 tomologist of the Indiana Agricultural Experiment Station, with 

 which he worked in cooperation. He reported during this period 

 mainly on the insects of the cereal crops, but he spent the early parts 

 of several years between 1886 and 1891 in the south, chiefly in Louisi- 

 ana and Arkansas, investigating the prevalent species of Sivmlium 

 known as buffalo-gnats and black flies. From December, 1888, to 

 April, 1889, he was on a voyage to Austraha (extended to include 

 Tasmania and New Zealand also) , whither he was sent to report on the 

 agricultural features of the Melbourne Exposition. For a year from 

 July 1, 1891, he was stationed at Columbus, 0., cooperating with 

 the Experiment Station there, as he had done in Indiana; and when 

 a reduction of appropriations compelled the discontinuance of his 

 national work he remained with the Ohio station as its entomologist, 

 accompanying it on its transfer to Wooster. It was during his resi- 

 dence in Ohio that he received from Ohio University (Athens) the 

 honorary degree of master of science. Executive relations finally be- 

 coming difficult, he withdrew from the Ohio service in 1902, and re- 

 turned to IlUnois to resume his old relationship on the staff of the 

 State Laboratory of Natural History, which had been transferred in 

 the meantime to the University of Illinois at Urbana. Finally, in 

 July, 1904, he entered on the last phase- of his career as a special field 

 agent again of the United States Bureau of Entomology, and, with the 

 division of the Bureau into definite sections in 1906, he was advanced to 

 the position which he occupied at the time of his death. Here as his 



