Brief History of Florida Entomology 
E. W. Berger, Ph.D., Entomologist Florida Experiment Station. 
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : 
The history of any subject, or phase 
of human activity, is always of much 
interest to me. I feel that unless I 
know something about the men that 
have come and gone and the work that 
they did, that I am really ignorant of 
my subject. As it is said that they ask 
in Philadelphia, so I like to ask about 
a man, who was his grandfather? And 
I like to ask who were my grandfath¬ 
ers, entomologically speaking. 
before 1850. 
To what extent Entomology in Flor¬ 
ida was made a serious subject for in¬ 
vestigators during the first half of the 
last century, and earlier, I am unable 
to state, having had no time to search 
for the information. Traveling natural¬ 
ists very likely made occasional visits, 
collected a lot -of insects, plants, and 
what not, and then retreated; later on, 
perhaps, they made a written report to 
some society or wrote a book. 
In Browne’s “Trees of America,”* 
published in or about 1846, reference 
is made to the first occurrence of the 
long scale at Mandarin, Florida, in 
1838. The introduction of this scale 
was probably made in 1835 on trees 
brought from China, bought in New 
York. These were set out in the Rob¬ 
inson grove. In 1840 the scale was in¬ 
troduced at St. Augustine. 
In 1855 (Patent Office Report for 
1855) Townend Glover (Entomologist 
at Washington) reports, the long scale 
as having become widely disseminated 
to both cultivated and wild citrus 
stock. Grove after grove was ruined, 
the trees being killed back each year 
and died or barely remained alive. 
Eater, some relief came and the trees 
began to recover. It would appear from 
this that some of the natural enemies, 
insect and fungus, had been introduced 
and were the means of giving relief. All 
other remedies had failed, including 
even whiskey and aloes. It is of pass¬ 
ing interest to note that St. Augustine 
was shipping $100,000 worth of or¬ 
anges annually as far back as 1835. 
AFTER 1850; U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRI¬ 
CULTURE. 
Occasionally, a reference to insects 
in Florida is found in Glover’s reports 
(Patent Office Reports and Reports of 
Commissioner of Agriculture) during 
the fifties and sixties until the end of 
the seventies. 
’•‘Copy wanted for Experiment Station Library. 
