Febbuaey 14, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



219 



Of an inquiring and experimental turn of mind, he 

 aimed to improve on the methods in vogue, and soon 

 won the esteem of all who knew him ; and, though so 

 young, was sought for in counsel and honored at pub- 

 lic gatherings, at which he became intimate with 

 Emory Cobb and other prominent farmers of Illinois. 

 Under these circumstances, and with a deep love of 

 nature in all her manifestations, it is no wonder that 

 Professor Eiley, as we have heard him avow, looks 

 back to the farming days in Illinois as the happiest 

 of his life. 



"The experience gained on the farm has enabled 

 him, more than anything else, to understand the po- 

 sition and needs of the farmer. In writing of Prof. 

 Eiley's farm life and the reasons why he abandoned 

 it, a Kankakee friend who knew him well, remarks: 

 ' Young Riley was simply too enthusiastic and too 

 bent on excelling in everything. He took no rest. 

 Often he would be up, actually get breakfast ready to 

 relieve the womenfolk, and milk half a dozen cows 

 before the others were about. When others were 

 resting at noon in the shade, he would be working at 

 his flowers under a July sun. There was not a sick 

 animal of the three hundred on the place that he did 

 not understand and help. He kept a lot of bees, got 

 hold of the best bred colts and some of the best heif- 

 ers in the county, secured a good quarter section, and 

 spent his Sundays reading, sketching, and studying 

 insects. Three years of this increasing efEort under 

 the trying climatic e.xtremes of central Illinois broke 

 the young fellow's health, for it was a great contrast 

 to his previous life, and with every one telling him 

 that he was wasting his talent he finally concluded 

 to give up the idea of farming. But had his health 

 not failed him, my opinion is that he would be a 

 farmer to-day, and a successful one too, for he has 

 intense love of rural life. ' 



' ' He went to Chicago in his twentieth year, with no 

 definite trade or profession and with little experience 

 of city life. Money was scarce among farmers in 

 those days, and his little property was so invested 

 that it was not available. The trials of his first few 

 months in Chicago are familiar to only a few of his 

 intimate friends, but the manner in which he over- 

 came them while yet in but poor health was charac- 

 teristic. Pride prevented him from asking help from 

 his Kankakee friends, but did not prevent him from 

 donning blue overalls and doing manual labor in a 

 pork-packing establishment, or from adding to his 

 slender income by making portraits of fellow-board- 

 ers, or sketches which he himself disposed of at even- 

 ing in the abodes of wealth on Michigan avenue. 

 After a while he obtained an engagement as reporter 

 on the Evening Journal, but finally became connected 

 with the Prairie Farmer, then the leading agricultural 



paper of the West. "Besides a close application to the 

 duties of his position as reporter, delineator and editor 

 of the entomological department of this paper, he de- 

 voted his time and energies to the study of botany 

 and entomology. His industry and versatility soon 

 malde him not only popular with his associates upon 

 the paper, but gave him a widespread reputation as 

 a writer upon natural history, especially on his 

 specialty of economic entomology, the importance of 

 which he soon made apparent." * 



His adventurous temperament led him to 

 enlist as a private in the 134th Illinois Vol- 

 unteers, in which he served for several 

 months during the Civil War in Kentucky 

 and Tennessee. 



Before entering the army he had made 

 the acquaintance of the man whom he 

 joined in 1868 in establishing the American 

 Entomologist. This friend, who was senior 

 editor until his death, was Dr. Benjamin D. 

 Walsh, State Entomologist of Illinois, and 

 it was Walsh to whom Riley always alluded 

 as his master and the man to whom he was 

 most indebted for his early training and in- 

 spiration. Mr. Walsh was a graduate of the 

 University of Cambridge, in the class with 

 Darwin, a man of great and scholarly attain- 

 ments and a most careful and painstaking 

 investigator. During the few years of his 

 residence in Illinois he had done much to 

 develop the interest in economic ento- 

 mology, which resulted in the establisli- 

 ment of the position of State Entomologist 

 of Missouri in 1868, which was the begin- 

 ning of Riley's public labors. 



An important outgrowth of Riley's per- 

 sonal activity in connection with his official 

 work was the formation of the Riley Col- 

 lection of insects, upon which he began 

 immediately after he left the army in 1864, 

 and which at the end of twenty-five years 

 included over 20,000 species, and over 115,- 

 000 mounted specimens, besides much other 

 material. The collection is in many re- 

 spects unique, especially so because of the 

 complete manner in which the life-history 



*Colman's Sural World, St. Louis, May 12, 1892. 



