242 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Some Xotes on the Life, Character and Works of Prof. 



C. V. Riley. 



Prof. Charles Valentine Riley, whose sudden death on the 14th of 

 September last was such an irreparable loss to his friends and to the 

 interests of natural science in America, was an Englishman by birth 

 and received his education in the elementary schools near London, and 

 after the age of eleven at Deippe in France and Bonn in Germany. In 

 all of these he was distinguished for his love of natural history, his 

 proficiency in acquiring languages and his talent for drawing and paint- 

 ing. In 1860, at the age of 17, being thrown upon his own resources, 

 he came to the United States and joined a friend of the family who 

 had emigrated and located on a large stock farm about fifty miles from 

 Chicago. 



Here young Riley, although entirely unused to manual labor or 

 hardship, remained for three years, working with characteristic indus- 

 try and learning all the details of farm life, especially the care of stock 

 and training of horses. In the intervals of harder work he cultivated 

 Mrs. Edwards' flower garden, studied the botany and especially the 

 entomology of the locality, both so different from those of Europe. 

 Nor did he neglect his pencil, but used it with admirable skill in por- 

 traits of the family with whom he made his home, in sketches of his 

 favorite animals, and in illustration of his notes on insects. Although 

 the labor was arduous and exacting, he always reverted to those days 

 on the farm as being not only incalculably valuable in fitting him for 

 his after profession, but as having afforded him great and varied pleas- 

 ures. 



Early in 1863, however, he felt that he owed it to himself to seek 

 some employment that would give greater scope to his abilities and 

 enable him lo use to greater advantage the educational training that he 

 had received. Naturally he went to Chicago, and, after some disap- 

 pointments and failures, which he met with invincible courage and de- 

 termination, he secured a position in the office of the Evening Journal, 

 and a few months later a still more congenial one on the Prairie Farmer, 

 then published by the genial and discriminating H. D. Emery. Here his 

 acquirements in natural history in general, and his — at that time very 

 unusual, knowledge of the forms and habits of both destructive and 

 beneficial insects, combined with his skill as an artist, soon made him 

 almost indispensible to his employers and added greatly to the useful- 

 ness and attractiveness of the paper. 



