414 
CHARLES VALENTINE RILEY. 
His great opportunity had now come. At this time he 
was twenty-five years of age. He entered upon his new 
duties with tremendous enthusiasm and long before the com¬ 
pletion of his series of nine annual reports his name was 
known in all parts of the civilized world as the foremost 
living economic entomologist. In this work Riley followed 
in the main the methods which he had learned from Walsh. 
His early reports show a touch of the discursiveness which 
forms the only blemish in Walsh’s published writings; but 
this bit of discursiveness was just enough to make them 
thoroughly readable to the agricultural population. His 
ability as a delineator of insects was unsurpassed, and his 
reports from beginning to end were filled with pictures of 
insects of lifelike character and marvelous scientific accuracy. 
Their equals had hardly before been seen. 
The reports were almost entirely based upon original ob¬ 
servations. He kept abreast with the scientific thought of 
the times, the field was almost entirely his own, and he made 
many discoveries of far-reaching practical and scientific im¬ 
portance. 
When we stop and consider that this Missouri work, which 
has been called epoch-making in its character, was accom¬ 
plished by Riley between the ages of 25 and 34, and that he 
did it single-handed, then we begin to realize that we are 
dealing with a most extraordinary man. 
Toward the close of his term of office in Missouri the dis¬ 
astrous outbreak of the Rocky Mountain locust or “ grass¬ 
hopper ” in Kansas, Colorado, and Nebraska attracted his 
attention to this line of investigation, and in 1876, through 
his efforts, the United States Entomological Commission was 
founded by Congress and placed under the Interior Depart¬ 
ment for the purpose of investigating this insect. This work 
brought him to Washington, and two years later he was ap¬ 
pointed Entomologist to the Department of Agriculture in 
place of Townend Glover, who had held that position for 
many years, but whose health had at that time failed. With 
the exception of an interval of nearly two years, Riley held 
