Entomologists in Washington

Helen Sollers.

One hundred years ago a man by the name of Townend Glover was so fascinated by insects that he made colored plates of every specimen he could get. He spent years making etchings on stone and copper. He also wrote about the insects he saw. He had a dream of a great book which would illustrate all the common insects of North America and help the farmer to identify any pest he found.

He had a counter interest that interfered with his dream, however. He made almost perfect models of fruits, which he exhibited at State fairs. He displayed the collection also in Washington, hoping that the Government would buy it. While he was in Washington, the Bureau of Agriculture was established in the Patent Office, and Glover was appointed in 1854 to collect information on insects, seeds, and fruits.

Things moved along in the next 8 years. The Department of Agriculture was established, and Glover was appointed the first entomologist in it. He wrote about the destruction of fruit and vegetable crops by insects. He had time to enlarge his agricultural museum. Congress appropriated $10,000 to buy the Glover Museum, which comprised insects, birds, and fruit models. He became curator of the museum.

Glover's heart and time went into the museum, which attracted crowds of people. But what was happening to his dream his "Illustrations of North American Entomology"? He toiled on plates and his notes in every spare hour. His friends pleaded with him to publish the work. Finally at various times in 6 years he put out four volumes in which he pictured and described grasshoppers, flies, true bugs, and a number of other insects. Fortunate it was that Glover heeded his friends' pleas and realized at least a part of his dream, because time soon ran out and he could produce no more.

CHARLES VALENTINE RILEY took over the post of entomologist in 1878 soon after Glover had retired. He was young and already had made a name for himself as State entomologist of Missouri. His series of annual reports entitled, "The Noxious, Beneficial, and Other Insects of the State of Missouri" were more readable and better illustrated than most of the other articles of his day.

Riley's first stay in the Department was less than a year as he resigned over a misunderstanding. Professor John Henry Comstock of Cornell University took his place. The 2 years that Comstock held office were eventful. New insecticides, such as paris green and london purple, were discovered; pyrethrum was being used in the United States for the first time. Great advances were made in other insecticides and in machinery for applying insecticides. Comstock, a practical man, helped place economic entomology on a sound footing in the United States.

A change of administration in 1881 sent Comstock back to Cornell and placed Riley in charge of the new division of entomology, which had been established in 1879. Riley was an active man and did four important things for entomology. He started to build an organization which grew into the Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine. His studies of the grape phylloxera helped the Europeans to bring this dangerous pest under control. He saved the citrus industry in California by bringing the Australian lady bird beetle to control the white scale, which was ravaging the citrus trees the first time an international experiment on natural control had been successfully carried out. Largely because of his efforts, the United States Entomological Commission was founded in 1877.

The job of the Commission (attached to the United States Geological and Geographical Surveys of the Territories) was to find out how to control the hordes of grasshoppers which had descended upon the crops in the West and Midwest and to prevent their recurrence. Three men, C. V. Riley, A. S. Packard, and Cyrus Thomas, made up the Commission. The results of their important work is published in several reports and bulletins on grasshoppers, armyworm, cotton worm, and several other insects. In 188o the Commission became a part of the Department of Agriculture. In June 1881 its activities ceased. A NEW ERA for entomology began when Leland O. Howard stepped into the position of chief of the division of entomology in 1894. Howard was an intellectual giant with ideas to promote. He wrote about insects, talked about them, and conducted campaigns against them. All this he did in such a clear and simple manner that he even got the children interested in killing flies. Americans began to wake up to insect problems. But Howard meant to keep them awake. For 33 years he hammered away to make our people aware of the seriousness of insect damage sufficiently aware to spur them into action. His books, The Insect Menace, Insect Book, and Fighting the Insects, challenged the people of the world to take up the fight against the insect horde.

Howard had another idea. He was interested in the natural control of insects controlling insects by other insects. Riley had pioneered in the field, but Howard really developed it. Summer after summer he sailed to Europe to consult famous entomologists and to arrange for shipment of parasites and predators left behind when the gypsy moth and brown-tail moth got into this country.

Actually he knew more about the subject than the Europeans because for years he had studied parasites and their hosts from a world viewpoint. Added to that he had described many of the parasites himself. Howard's personality won him many friends. The friends helped him to establish a regular plan of shipping parasites and predators from several European countries into the United States.

Following the First World War an incident happened that Howard termed a parasite introduction of a reversed kind, that is, from America to Europe, instead of from Europe to America. The woolly apple aphid is native to the United States, but in some way it got into England and then into France and was called "the American blight." A minute parasite was the chief reason the woolly apple aphid was not a very serious pest in our country. The French wanted the parasite. Howard himself took a direct part in the experiment. He put the precious packages of parasites in the refrigerator room of the boat. Arriving in London late at night, he laid the packages on the window ledge outside his room. The next 3 days the parasites rested in a fish monger's cold room.

Then the great day arrived. Dr. Paul Marchal, who wanted the parasites for France, hastened with Howard from the station in Paris to the laboratory. Here, made ready for the occasion, was a pear tree well infested with woolly apple aphids and covered with gauze. Everyone gathered around and the packages of parasites were opened and one by one their contents emptied on the white paper. To everyone's amazement not a live parasite could be seen. Failure stared at them. However, they put the gauze back over the tree and Howard and Marchal went to the south of France. By the time they reached Montpellier a telegram arrived telling them that all the parasites were not dead as they had supposed but 10 had emerged from the dead aphids. Soon 200 emerged and by the time Howard got back to Paris these had multiplied to millions in Marshal's experimental garden. The parasites passed the winter and helped to settle the problem of the French fruit growers.

Howard had a third idea to advance. Little work had been done in the field of insects in relation to disease. He believed house flies carried diseases, and he fought to make people believe that the flies in their houses could do them harm. He inaugurated antifly campaigns. "Swat the fly" stirred peoples' interest in insects throughout the country. Europeans also caught the idea and started campaigns of their own. His book, The Housefly Disease Carrier, boosted the fly crusades everywhere. It was even translated into Russian, Hungarian, and Spanish. In Hungary it was used as a reader in the public schools.

Then came the mosquito crusade. Shortly after malaria and yellow fever were discovered to be carried by mosquitoes, Howard's book, Mosquitoes How They Live; How They Carry Disease; How They Are Classified; How They May Be Destroyed, came off the press. The moment was ripe for such a book. Yellow fever was the scourge of Havana and Panama. The control measures presented in Howard's book were put into immediate action and helped to rid both places of the disease. But Howard was not satisfied with this book. It did not contain the facts that mosquitoes carry malaria and yellow fever. He then embarked on a more ambitious scheme an extensive monograph of The Mosquitoes of North America, Central America, and the West Indies. This four-volume work helped sanitarian, doctors, and biological workers the world over. Co-authors with Howard were H. G. Dyar and F. Knab.

DR. HOWARD won numerous awards, medals, and honorary memberships in societies. He was a member of practically every entomological society in the world. Howard's ideas helped entomology to grow. As Riley's assistant he had learned the technique of organization but improved on it so well that, 10 years after Riley resigned in 1894, Howard headed a Bureau instead of a division. The Bureau of Entomology to Dr. Howard was a dream fulfilled.

One of the men in the new Bureau was Charles L. Marlatt. For many years he had observed pest after pest reaching our shores and settling here. By 1900 such invaders as the codling moth, the hessian fly, the San Jose scale and horn fly helped themselves to a good share of our food supply. Several attempts had been made to keep the pests out, but Marlatt could see that the problem was not solved. His plan was to put up a legal fence.

The first step in this direction was the passage of the Insect Pest Act of 1905. It prohibited shipping live insects into this country, mailing them, or sending them from State to State. The Act helped, but it did not go far enough. Marlatt wanted a law to keep bugs from entering the United States on their host plants or in any other way. He prepared such a law and labored for 3 years to get it passed.

FINALLY IN 1912 he saw the Plant Quarantine Act become a reality. For the first time a .plant quarantine had police power behind it. Imports of nursery stock, plants, and plant products could now be restricted or stopped to prevent new diseases and insect pests from entering the United States. The Act also made possible the control of insect-infested products moving across State lines into uninfected areas.

The Federal Horticultural Board was established in 1912 and Dr. Marlatt, father of Federal quarantines, became its chairman. The Board made investigations concerning foreign and domestic insect pests before it could propose quarantine action. It also held hearings to find out the need for plant quarantines and had the authority to enforce them. In 1928 the Board became the Plant Quarantine and Control Administration.

During the time that Marlatt served on the Board, he was also Howard's associate chief and in 1927 became chief of the Bureau when Howard retired.