PROFESSOR RILEY'S OBITUARY 333 



gist, made him widely known and popular, and gave him such 

 prestige that it resulted in his appointment in 1868 as State 

 Entomologist of Missouri. From that time until 1877, when he 

 left St. Louis to live in Washington, he issued a series of nine 

 annual reports on injurious insects, which showed remarkable 

 powers of observation both of structure and habits, great skill 

 in drawing, and especially ingenious and thoroughly practical 

 devices and means of destroying the pests. It goes without 

 saying that this prestige existed to the end of his life, his 

 practical applications of remedies and inventions of apparatus 

 giving him a \vorld-wide reputation. In token of his suggestion 

 of reviving the vines injured by the Phylloxera by the importa- 

 tion of the American stock, he received a gold medal from the 

 French Government, and he afterwards received the Cross of 

 the Legion d'Honneur in connection with the exhibit of the 

 U. S. Department of Agriculture at the Paris Exposition of 1880. 

 1 The widespread ravages of the Rocky Mountain locust from 

 1873 to 1877 had occasioned such immense loss in several States 

 and Territories that national aid was invoked to avert the evil. 

 The late Dr. F. V. Hayden, then in charge of the U. S. Geogra- 

 phical and Geological Survey of the Territories, sent Dr. P. R. 

 Uhler to Colorado in the summer of 1875. Mr. Walsh had 

 made important suggestions as to the birthplace and migrations 

 of the insect. Meanwhile Riley had since 1874 made very 

 detailed studies on the migration and breeding habits and 

 means of destruction of this locust. Dr. Cyrus Thomas had 

 also been attached to Hayden's Survey, and published a mono- 

 graph on the locust family, Acrididce. As the result of this 

 combined work Congress created the United States Entomo- 

 logical Commission, attaching to it Dr. Hayden's Survey, and 

 the Secretary of the Interior appointed Charles V. Riley, A. S. 

 Packard, and Cyrus Thomas members of the Commission. Dr. 

 Riley was appointed chief, and it was mainly owing to his 

 executive ability, business sagacity, experience in official life, 

 together with his scientific knowledge and practical inventive 

 turn of mind in devising remedies, or selecting those invented 

 by others, that the work of the Commission was so popular and 

 successful during the five years of its existence. In 1878, while 

 the Report of the Commission was being printed, Riley accepted 

 the position of Entomologist to the U. S. Department of Agri- 

 culture, but owing to the lack of harmony in the Department, 

 he resigned, Professor J. H. Comstock being appointed. Con- 

 gress meanwhile transferred the cotton-worm investigation 

 [on \vhich Riley had been engaged] to the Entomological 

 Commission. Dr. Riley was reappointed to the position of 

 U. S. Entomologist in June, 1881. Mr. L. O. Howard said of 

 the administration of this office : u The present efficient organi- 

 sation of the Division of Entomology was his own original 



