Rev. Modestus Wirtner, Amateur 
Hemipterist: Correspondence with E.P. Van Duzee 
A.G. Wheeler, Jr. 
Bureau of Plant Industry, Pennsylvania Department 
of Agriculture, Harrisburg 17120 
Amateurs were largely responsible for the early growth of Ameri¬ 
can entomology. A later contributor was a Pennsylvania priest, the 
Rev. Modestus Wirtner, O.S.B. During the first 15 years of the twen¬ 
tieth century, Father Modestus collected Hemiptera in the vicinity of 
churches he served in western Pennsylvania and assembled an im¬ 
pressive collection, which culminated in the 1904 publication of the 
only useful general account of Pennsylvania Hemiptera. 
Little information has been available regarding the role of Rev. 
Wirtner in American hemipterology. For example, Osborn (1937,1952) 
was unable to supply a year of birth and devoted only one sentence to 
his activities. Recently, Wheeler and Henry (1977) presented a bio¬ 
graphical sketch of Father Modestus and, after examining his collec¬ 
tion, which is housed at St. Vincent College, Latrobe, Pennsylvania, 
made additions and corrections to the 74 species of Miridae given in 
his 1904 list. 
Rev. Wirtner’s interest in entomology began during his seminary 
days at St. Vincent when he volunteered to work on the insect collec¬ 
tion under the Rev. Jerome Schmitt, designer of the Schmitt box and 
student of ants and pselaphid and scydmaenid beetles (Gurney et al., 
1975). While Rev. Schmitt taught at Belmont Abbey College in North 
Carolina in the early 1880’s, Father Modestus was left in charge of the 
collection (Wheeler and Henry, 1977). 
After his ordination into the Order of St. Benedict in July 1886, 
Father Modestus spent 12 years at churches in remote regions of 
Colorado before returning to western Pennsylvania in 1889. He had 
become interested in Hemiptera while stationed in Colorado and now 
wanted to acquire facility with that group of insects. He began to 
correspond with many of the leading specialists in Hemiptera: E.D. 
Ball, Otto Heidemann, Herbert Osborn, O.M. Reuter, J.G. Sanders, 
and E.P. Van Duzee, then America’s foremost hemipterist. Father 
Modestus sent specimens for determination and retained much of 
the information provided by specialists (D.M. DeLong, pers. com.). 
With the aid of identified specimens, Rev. Wirtner was able to make 
many of his own determinations. Later (1917) he described a new 
genus and species of Miridae from Pennsylvania. 
Rev. Wirtner’s file of letters apparently was destroyed, but much of 
his correspondence with Mr. Van Duzee fortunately has been pre¬ 
served at the University of Missouri and at the California Academy of 
Sciences where Van Duzee served as curator of insects for many 
The Pan-Pacific Entomologist 54:38-42. January 1978 
