OBITUARY NOTICES. 
415 
the position, called by courtesy that of United States Ento¬ 
mologist, from that time until June, 1894. The Entomolog¬ 
ical Commission was continued, and published bulletins and 
reports down to 1884. 
In the Department of Agriculture Riley was a leader. His 
interest in agricultural science extended beyond the bound¬ 
aries of his own specialty, and he was practically responsible 
for many reforms and for many innovations of great value 
in the department. He was the warm personal friend of two 
of the Commissioners, and his advice had great weight with 
them. 
Aside from his work during these years in the Department 
of Agriculture, he was an active man elsewhere. He became 
a member of the Philosophical Society when he first came to 
Washington, and was afterward prominent in the work of the 
Biological Society, of which he was president for two years. 
He was the founder and first president of the Entomological 
Society of Washington, and one of the founders of the Cosmos 
Club. The scientific and agricultural societies of which he 
was a member are so numerous that they cannot be listed 
here. Many of them were foreign, and he was most prom¬ 
inent in many American societies. 
One of the saddest facts connected with his early death is 
associated with his plans for future work. In 1886 he gave 
his collection of insects, amounting to 115,000 specimens, to 
the United States National Museum to help form a Depart¬ 
ment of Insects, and held the office of Honorary Curator of 
that department until his death. It was his intention after 
his resignation from the Department of Agriculture, in 1894, 
to devote the remaining years of his life to pure scientific re¬ 
search, and he rejoiced at having thrown off the cares of 
routine work connected with the office which he had previ¬ 
ously held in the department. His death in little less than 
a year thereafter seems a shocking example of the irony of 
fate, and certainly it occasioned a loss to pure science the 
extent of which cannot be estimated: 
It is safe to say that in the comparatively new science of 
59—Bull. Phil. Soc., Wash., Vol. 13. 
