Vol. xxix] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS 323 



ticeship to the full professorship in human anatomy in 1887, — " 

 a striking recognition of his ability. 



After three years in this position, he accepted a call to the 

 University of Kansas in 1890 as Professor of Historical Geolo- 

 gy and Palaeontology. Twelve years of his prime were spent in 

 this institution, years crowded with productive labor. He 

 helped organize the medical department of the University, and 

 took on the deanship of it along with his other work ; this 

 almost broke his vigorous health, and he had to slacken his 

 pace, — perhaps never again quite regained it. 



The consciousness that he was working beyond his strength 

 had something to do with his going to the University of 

 Chicago in 1902 as Professor of Palaeontology. Here he 

 was able to concentrate on a single specialty, officially at least, 

 as he left medicine behind and thought he had left entomology 

 also. In this place he spent the last fourteen years of his life, 

 beginning under some unexpected handicaps and gradually 

 working up to full recognition and honor. 



In the outline just given, entomology is hardly hinted at, for 

 the reason that Williston never held an official entomological 

 position. But he found time to do much valuable work as a 

 pioneer in dipterology. His employer would not allow him 

 to publish in palaeontology, and he sought a field outside 

 w^here he could be free to work and publish ; this he found 

 in the Diptera. His interest in the flies began to be serious 

 about 1878. At this time Osten Sacken had returned to 

 Europe, and there was not a single American student of 

 the order but Edward Burgess, the Boston yacht designer, 

 who published only one small paper. So Williston was vir- 

 tually alone on the continent. In the absence of guidance, 

 he plowed his way by main strength (as he often narrated to 

 the writer) through descriptions of species until here and 

 there he made an identification, which served as an anchor 

 point for a new offensive. He had few definitions of genera, 

 so had to work backward from the species. After a year or 

 two of this tedious and time-wasting effort he came upon 

 Schiner's Fauna Austriaca, in which the Austrian families, ' 



