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; MONTHLY LETTER OF THE BUREAU OF ENTOMOLOGY ~~~ > | 

Number 185 
FRANK HURLBUT CHITTENDEN 
Bureau men and women will have seen, in the Official Record of 
September 26, a notice of Doctor Chittenden's death and some account 
of his career. Briefly, he was born in Cleveland, November 3, 1858, 
graduated from Cornell University in 1881, and was given the degree 
of Doctor of Science by the University of Pittsburg in 1904. He joined 
the Department of Agriculture in April, 1891, and served continuously 
until his death, on September 15. 
Chittenden was a born entomologist, and always collected insects. 
He was at Cornell during the period when Professor Comstock had charge 
of the entomological work here in Washington; and he therefore failed 
to get the benefit he would have derived from association with Com- 
stock. The locum tenens at Ithaca was W. S. Barnard, who was not as 
experienced an entomologist as was Chittenden himself. It resulted 
that the latter did just as he pleased during his last two years at 
Cornell, and this did not please Barnard; consequently, on completing 
his course, he was not given a bachelor's degree, but only a licentiate. 
After he left Ithaca he lived in Brooklyn, where he was one of the founders 
of the Brooklyn Entomological Society and also one of the editors of 
Entomologica Americana. I think that his appointment to Washington in 
1891 was made through the just organized U. S. Civil Service Commission. 
He was active in the great amount of editorial work connected with the 
publication of Insect Life and the bulletins of the Division, and soon 
became greatly interested in the subject of insects affecting truck 
crops and also insects affecting stored foods. In the useful bulletin 
published by the Department in 1896 entitled "Household Insects," he 
contributed the important chapter on stored-food insects. As time went 
on he became the chief of a section of Bureau work devoted to these two 
subjects, and built up a strong force, and was the author of very many 
important papers. 
He was a very quiet, studious man, who traveled little and sel- 
dom attended meetings. But his knowledge of insects was very great. 
Those of us who knew him best here in Washington, and who worked with 
him for very many years, think that he was probably the most learned 
man in America on everything relating to the insects that are found in 
the garden. His especial work was in Coleoptera, and since his retire-— 
ment from the active supervision of his section he had been living 
quietly at his home on Vermont Avenue and working with certain groups 
of beetles in which he was particularly interested. He never married, 
and since the death of his widowed mother a number of years ago, his 
widowed sister, Mrs. Charles J. Jones, lived with him. 
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