90 



aud Dr. E. Okleudorff, also Geimau employes of the Argentine Govern- 

 ment, investigated and reported upon injurious locusts during the years 

 1874 and 1876. A later commission was established, as I am informed 

 by SeSor Enrique M. Nelson, but its publications are not accessible to 

 me at present. Similar work of a semiofticial character has been done 

 by Dr. Frederico Philippi, of the Botanical Gardens at Santiago, Chile, 

 and by Dr. A. Ernst, director of the National Museum at Caracas, 

 Venezuela, and to a lesser degree by other observers in other South 

 American countries. 



Brazil. — In November, 1870, Mr. B. Pickman Mann, a well-known 

 entomologist, of Cambridge, Mass., went to Brazil, bearing a letter of 

 liersonal introduction to the Emperor Dom Pedro II from Prof. Louis 

 Agassiz. He arrived about the end of December and presented his 

 letter, when the Emperor recommended him in a personal letter to the 

 Minister of Agriculture, who, in January, 1871, gave Mr. Mann a com- 

 mission to investigate the zoology, botany, and entomology of Brazil, 

 witli a salary and a free railway pass. Mr. Maun selected his own field 

 of work, and investigated coffee aud maize insects for five months, pre- 

 senting a report upon each. He returned to the United States in June, 

 1871. So far as I know, these reports were, unfortunately, never pub- 

 lished by the Brazilian Department of Agriculture, although Mr. Mann, 

 after his return, published in the American Naturalist an interesting 

 account of some of his observations upon coffee insects. 



About 1885 Dr. Emil A. Goeldi, a former Phylloxera expert in Switz- 

 erland, and at that time curator of zoology in the National Museum at 

 Eio de Janeiro, was commissioned to study coffee-tree diseases about 

 Rio. He prepared a detailed report, which was published in the last 

 volume of the archives of the Museum. Before the completion of this 

 report he was sent to Sao Paulo to study the viticultural interests of 

 that State, and especially to report upon the danger from the Phyl- 

 loxera. Concerning this investigation he published a book entitled 

 Vedeiras Americanos (American Vines). This work, I believe, was 

 published privately, and in it the author showed the advantages of the 

 culture of North American vines, especially those of the Vitis a'sti- 

 ralis group. In 1890 Dr. Goeldi left Rio, and is at present director of 

 the Colonia Alpena of Theresopolis and also director of the Museum of 

 Natural History at Para. 



Chile. — The Chilean Government began an official investigation of 

 injurious insects in December, 1891, and by a vote of Congress the 

 amount of $200,000 was appropriated to be expended in exterminating 

 the Argentine locust, which invaded Chile December 7 to 11, 1891. 

 Less than $10,000, however, was expended, and there is now no reg- 

 ular appropriation beyond the salary of the entomologist, Mr. Edwyn 

 C. Reed, an American, and formerly connected with the U. S. Naval 

 Academy at Annapolis, Md. The reason for the expenditure of so 

 small a sum was, primarily, the fact that the Chilean territory invaded 



