82 PROCEEDINGS OF THE INDIANA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



these various organizations, it required a very active and busy l)rain, and this 

 is just what Webster possessed to an eminent degree. 



The writer had just come to Purdue University in the fall of 1884, only 

 a few weeks before Webster appeared on the scene, and both being interested 

 in practically the same kind of work, a very close friendship sprang up be- 

 tween them, which continued until his death from pneumonia at Columbus, 

 Ohio, in January, 1916, while attended a meeting of the American Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science. It has been said that he was Professor 

 of Economic Entomology in Purdue University from 1885-1888. This is a 

 mistake. Professor Webster never did any teaching while located at Purdue 

 University; in fact, he often remarked to the writer that no amount of money 

 could induce him to take charge of classes in the class-room. This was not 

 his forte. It is somewhat rare at the present time to find a great investigator 

 and a great teacher in the same person. The investigator must find out the 

 facts, often by long and patient "watchful waiting," before the teacher can 

 impart them to the younger generation in such a way as to make them helpful 

 to the world. Webster was an investigator, a close observer and thinker along 

 the lines of natural history, but he did not wish to be confined to the walls of 

 a class-room. His activities could only be limited by the broad fields of Na- 

 ture. And it is well that it was so. Forty years ago, when Webster first 

 came on the scene, there was great need of careful investigators. The science 

 of Entomology was comparatively new (it is not old yet), and but very little 

 real practical scientific information had been published. Teachers were grop- 

 ing in the dark for facts which they did not possess, and many of the so-called 

 facts of those days have since had to be revised, and in this work Webster 

 had an active part. His first pul>lished articles liegan to appear about 1874, 

 and, although not a college graduate, many of his i)apers since that time would 

 do credit to the best trained minds of his day. He was strong on using the 

 daily and weekly newspapers for his publications, because (1) so much of 

 the so-called information given out by these i)eriodicals was so imreliable and 

 unsatisfactory that he wished to correct that e\i\ as much as possible; and 

 (2) he saw in them a quick and cheap method of getting this information out 

 to the people. But he came to be an authority among the scientific men of 

 this and other countries. Many of his articles have been published in the 

 best scientific journals of the world. His address as President of the Associa- 

 tion of Economic Entomologists, in 1897, entitled "The Present and Future 

 of Applied P]ntomology in America," is spoken of by Dr. L. O. Howard, as 

 one of the best things he ever wrote. While his work was not confined to 

 any one class of insects, his best and perhaps most useful work has been along 

 the lines of Cereal and Forage Crop Insect investigations. The farming 

 interests of the United States owe much to the life work of F. M. Webster. 

 "He died at the end of a long and useful career, actively in the harness, but 

 with a most useful life work accomplished, with his children grown up and 

 practically established in life, and after all it was a good way to die." 



