From Arsenic to DDT: A History of Entomology in Western Canada 9781487577797

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PAUL

w. RIEGERT is a member of the Department of Biology at the University of

Regina. Across the prairies and west to the Pacific, man has had to fight a constant battle against insect pests. He has had to learn about these enemies, and then how to control them. This is the story of entomology in western Canada from the time of the explorers to the outbreak of the Second World War - a history of a science, but also of a war. Riegert describes the impact of insect hordes, from the mosquitoes which assaulted the Danish explorer Jens Munk on the shores of Hudson Bay in 1619, to the devastating plagues of grasshoppers of the 1930s. He tells of the experiences and contributions to entomology of early collectors and naturalists, both professional and amateur. In the face of insect threats to lives and fortunes, however, the task of the entomologist moved beyond identification and description into insect control. To suppress or eliminate certain species, quarantine and control laws were passed, chemical poisons used, predatory or parasitic species brought into action. Various agricultural and physical approaches to control were employed. Concurrently professional entomology developed, beginning with the appointment of James Fletcher as first Dominion Entomologist, through the establishment by 1914 of entomological laboratories at Agassiz, British Columbia, Treesbank, Manitoba, and Lethbridge, Alberta, to the general growth of taxonomic work in western Canada up to 1940. The author also looks at academic entomology in this period. This account of the interaction of insects and man in western Canada comprises a detailed and absorbing history suited to entomologists, natural historians, historians of science, researchers, and teachers.

Norman Criddle, dean of early western Canadian entomologists

PAUL W. RIEGERT

From Arsenic to DDT: A History of Entomology in Western Canada

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University ofToron10 Press 1980 Toron10 Buffalo London Prin1ed in Canada Reprinted in 2018 ISBN

0-8020-5499-4

ISBN 978-1-4875-7880-0 (paper)

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Rieger!, Paul W., 1923From arsenic to DDT Includes index. ISBN 0-8020-5499-4 1. En1omology - Canada, Weslern - History. 2. Insec1s, Injurious and beneficial - Canada, Wes1ern - History. 3. Insecl con1rol - Canada, Wes1ern - His1ory. I. Tille. 595.709712

TO Dr K.M. King, who, by his example, taught me diligence, honesty, and exactitude in science;

the entomologists I have known, whose friendliness is unexcelled ; the insects, our worthy adversaries

Contents

FOREWORD PREFACE

by Dr John H. Archer ix

xi

Introduction 3 Part I Early encounters 1 Explorers versus insects 7 2 Settlers versus insects 2 3 3 Collectors and naturalists 41 Part II The first professionals 4 James Fletcher, Dominion Entomologist 59 5 The North-West (Canada) Entomological Society 81 6 Western expansion: Hewitt, Criddle, and Strickland 86 Part III Insects of British Columbia 7 British Columbia entomology 101 8 Eric Hearle versus mosquitoes 119 9 William Downes at Victoria 132 10 Glendenning at Agassiz 146 II The interior 163 12 Indian orchards 184 Part IV Insects of the prairies 13 The locust: 1919-1923 195 14 The wheat stem sawfly 214

viii Contents 15 16

Return of the locust: the thirties 222 Worms 252

Part

V Specialization Pests, paralysis, and plagues 281 18 Insects of stored products 300 19 Entomology in the universities 307

17

Conclusion 20 An uneasy truce 31 5 Federal entomological officers 323

NOTES 325 A NOTE ON SOURCES

INDEX 349

347

Foreword

A wide clientele of researchers and readers will be grateful to Professor Paul Riegert for this work on the history of entomology in western Canada. The volume is written in a vigorous style, its research and scholarship softened by humour and human interest. Certainly it bears that ring of authority that knowledge of a subject brings to any recital of developments. The author is well qualified to write on entomology. He spent more than twenty years as a research scientist in Canada Agriculture Research Station at Saskatoon. He spent ten years as a professor of biology at the University of Regina and is at present head of the department. He was born in Saskatchewan and grew up in the environment of which he writes. Professor Riegert's work covers the four western provinces - certainly a sufficiently broad area to give scope for comparisons. He has gone back in history to remind the reader that early explorers, fur traders, and travellers encountered insects firsthand and wrote of their experiences with candour. Historians have not always reckoned with the influence of mosquito, black fly, and horsefly on the views held by intruders in the Great Lone Land. Professor Riegert points out that the Entomological Society of Canada was formed in 1862, five years prior to Confederation and while the north-west was still the preserve of the Hudson's Bay Company. The backward look, however, is but an introduction to the era of settlement. The opening of the prairie west to agricultural settlement and the arrival of settlers in great numbers from many foreign countries brought an immediate and direct interest in the insect life of the prairies. The settlement of river valleys in British Columbia and the development of orchards resulted in the same direct interest in insect pests there. Up to this period insects had been considered a source of irritation to man and beast alike - a fact of the country. Some visitors had found aesthetic pleasure in the variety of insect life. With the coming of the homesteaders the economic factor came to the fore. There had been locusts and grasshoppers and various other pests to destroy crops and gardens in the Red River Valley. The

x Foreword newcomers brought with them pests not native to the prairies and as the prairie land came under the plough, and as orchards bloomed in British Columbia, the factor of personal discomfort gave way to the more lasting hurt of economic loss directly caused by insects. The role played by insects in western Canada is inextricably intertwined with the fortunes of agricultural man. Some insects, quite obviously, were beneficial - the majority were not. Professor Riegert examines them as they enter the arena. He knows his history and he knows entomology. He outlines efforts made by amateurs and trained scientists to identify, study, and understand, and then to control and neutralize the harmful effects of, a great array of insect pests. This is where the book takes on an added dimension. Professor Riegert writes of campaigns against harmful insects as a general might write of a campaign in difficult terrain. His war on grasshoppers reads like the battle diary of a unit of dedicated home troops. Yet he knows, and states, that dedication and technology are not of themselves the whole story. The weather in season has much to do with the success of any campaign. One cannot but respect the patient work of entomologists who spend weeks, years, gathering information on the life cycles of insect pests in order to understand methods of control and the implications of control measures. The author does full justice to the work of these dedicated scientists. He writes feelingly of the successes and disappointments of the people involved in the never-ending war with the insect armies. He writes of the aesthetic and of the economic. He is aware of the impetus given to the teaching of entomology in colleges and universities by the successes and failures recorded to date. He discusses the problem, so vital to the individual farmer, of adjusting insurance claims in fields infested with sawfly, and devastated by hail. Indeed, he brings the subject of entomology to your doorstep. This is a very good work. It is both scholarly and entertaining. It is written with a deft touch of knowledge, enlivened by humour, zestful for action. Professor Riegert writes of new technological advances, new chemical weapons, new protective measures, all developed and hurried into the fight against destructive and harmful insects. But he recognizes that the war is far from over. Insects were here long before men appeared. Insects have proven themselves to be hardy, adaptable, persistent - perhaps more hardy and adaptable than mankind. From Arsenic to DDT: A History of Entomology in Western Canada is a vigorous, balanced work, a landmark book in a field that touches on our very livelihood. JOHN H. ARCHER President Emeritus and Professor of Western History, University of Regina

Preface

The writing of a history of a science is always a risky undertaking. If it is written by a historian there is the danger it may include too little science. Conversely, if written by a scientist there may be too little history. Because the latter situation may prevail in the present instance I decided quite early that I would simply write about insects and· man, about their encounters and the ensuing consequences. I endeavoured to permit the chronological events to hew their own paths and to grow their own truths. The resultant tale is that story: an interaction of species embarked upon a journey through time, struggling for survival and dominance. At the outset, I must warn the reader of one omission in the current work. This history purports to include reference to all insects of western Canada, except for the forest insects, which were deliberately not included. The history of the forest industry, including forest entomology, has already been prepared and written. I was shown a manuscript, in the Pacific Forest Research Station in Victoria, British Columbia, that was reported to document the history of the forest industry in Canada, but I was not given access to its contents. To avoid unnecessary duplication, the story of forest entomology, therefore, was not included here. I never once imagined that I could write a history without help or guidance. I owe any success I may have had to the many entomologists and friends who encouraged my efforts. I am especially indebted to John H . Archer of the History Department, and former President, of the University of Regina, for his suggestion that I write a history of entomology, and for his continuous and enthusiastic encouragement thereafter. I am grateful to the Canada Council for financial assistance (Grant No. s74-1514), without which I could not have travelled the distances and stayed to contact and interview so many people, or adequately searched the many libraries and archives so widely placed across Canada. My task was made easier by the unfailing and courteous help of librarians and archivists in the Public Archives and libraries in Ottawa, in the

xii Preface provincial archives and libraries, and in the universities of the four western provinces. I was almost overwhelmed by the generosity and assistance given to me by Canada Agriculture and the officials in the Research Branch. Not only was I given unlimited access to files and reports in Ottawa but I was also officially encouraged to do the work by Drs B. Migicovsky and E. LeRoux. To them, and to the directors of institutes and research stations in Ottawa, Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Lethbridge, Penticton, Kamloops, Vancouver, and Saanich, I am humbly thankful. I also thank the Glenbow-Alberta Institute, Calgary, for giving me access to its archival material, and Syd W. Collier Company of Toronto for providing photocopying services. Most of the photographs used in the book were made available to me through the courtesy of Canada Agriculture - its headquarters, Research Branch, and the various stations across western Canada. Special thanks are due the following individuals who assisted me in obtaining photographs or delved into private collections: Alma Criddle, R. Glendenning, Jack Gregson, Alex Harper, George Holland, K.M. King, Harold Madsen, and Edward R. Taylor. Sincere thanks are due Dagmar Stebner, Marilyn Chamberlin, Ann Wolfond, and Terry Gebert for graciously spending the long hours transcribing tapes and typing manuscripts. The mistakes, omissions, and inaccuracies in the text are mine. Lastly, I thank my wife Betty, for unfailing encouragement and sympathetic understanding during those many days when dusty manuscripts and lonely, silent libraries received the attention that was rightfully hers. This book has been published with the help of grants from the Social Science Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and from the Publications Fund of University of Toronto Press. This assistance is greatly appreciated.

FROM ARSENIC TO DDT

Introduction

Insects have been on earth much longer than man. Is it any wonder then that man should show some interest in these time-tested life forms that have withstood the rigours of climate, environmental diversity, and evolutionary change? Aristotle and Pliny wrote treatises on natural history including bees and other insects. Apart from beekeeping and silkworms no one took much interest in insects until the seventeenth century. Thomas Moffett's treatise /nsectorum sive Minimorum Animalium Theatrum appeared posthumously in 1634. The study of insects was not thought of as a wholesome occupation. When Lady Glanville's will was probated about 1700, it was contested by some of her relatives, who claimed she was insane because she had collected and studied insects. They argued that anyone who would pursue butterflies must have lost her senses. Her will was probated only when her legatees received the backing of Hans Sloane, founder of the British Museum, and John Ray, a proponent of the binomial nomenclature of living things, who convinced the judge and jury of the Exeter court that the lady indulged in the respectable science of entomology. Melitoea cinxia, the Glanville fritillary, is named in her honour.' Entomology has been treated with amused disdain and entomologists regarded as 'funny people.' As J. Alston Moffat presented it: 'Entomology is the science that gives to insects long names, short lives and a pin through the middle'. That bit of humor with its absence of correct information, its jocular misrepresentation, and its implied disparagement of the subject, reflects, fairly well, the condescending attitude assumed toward it, by the great majority of every community, who seem to regard it as the frivolous pastime of a few harmless lunatics, that might be better employed, but who are yet more to be pitied than blamed. Such being the common view of entomology entertained by the multitude, it is not surprising that so few should be found willing to turn their attention to it, either as a science, or for its economic bearing on the prosperity of the

4 Introduction community, or as a recreation. Indeed it requires a firm conviction of its value and importance in the world by those engaged in it, or the great pleasure derived from a study of it which it brings to themselves, to make them willing to endure the faintly disguised wonder and disdain they are exposed to.2

Everyone has seen a picture of an entomologist as depicted by the cartoonist. A bespectacled and dishevelled hunched-over figure is examining a pin-pierced insect under a magnifying glass, while surrounded by boxes of other pinned specimens, all in a garrett-like room of questionable ancestry; or a wild-eyed individual, clothes flapping, is racing over the countryside in hot pursuit of a little butterfly, vainly trying to enmesh it in the folds of a gigantic funnel-net . There is not much doubt that the avid collector of insects created his own image, one that bore instant recognition in the eyes of his fellow man. The Entomological Society of Canada was among the earliest of the scientific societies formed in Canada. On 26 September 1862, 10 of the 36 known devotees of the science of entomology in Canada met in the home of Henry H. Croft, a professor at the University of Toronto, to form the national Canadian society.3 None of the 36 was a 'professional' entomologist; they were theologians, military men, medical doctors, professors, geologists, bankers, pharmacists, and civil servants. Women were not among the least of these. They were 'amateurs' whose common interest in insects was their mutual bond. None represented western Canada. There were a few collectors and hobbyists east of Winnipeg in the mid- I 86os and it might be argued that entomology in western Canada began here. Because this is a history of entomology and not a history of entomologists, the present chronicle will follow insects rather than men - the association of insects and men, as they interacted with one another in western Canada. The reader will be led through the years of early exploration, the era of settlement of the West, the period of the amateur collector, and the expanded association of the professional entomologist. This association between man and insect has always been problematic. Has either side won or lost? What have we gained?

PART I: EARLY ENCOUNTERS

I

Explorers versus insects

The great majority of people are unaware of the diversity of life around them and usually do not consciously associate with biology, although they are part of it. Because this branch of natural science deals with all forms of life it is no small wonder that the showy flowers of plants and the larger animals took precedence in man's recognition and identification of life forms. Insects, alas, have been relegated to the last or lowest rungs of the zoological ladder. Early explorers were concerned with reaching a goal in the best way possible. When the goal was western Canada, this meant getting there in the shortest time possible. Notice of insects was taken only when they became an annoyance or a threat. One of the first points of entry into western Canada was from the western shore of Hudson Bay. Ever since Henry Hudson set foot on its ice-packed rim in 1610 others have followed in his wake. Each explorer, in turn, was met by the hostility of the land, the harshness of the weather, and the presence of biting flies . Captain Jens Munk, a Danish explorer, landed on the spit of land, near where Churchill, Manitoba, stands today, in 1619. Although he finally left there the following summer with only two crew men, the other 62 having died of scurvy, he tells of hardship and deprivation. Not only was the food supply depleted to the point where they ate roots, but insects plagued them as soon the ice began to melt: 'The summer season approaching, they were extremely pester'd with gnats, which made them hasten their departure; so that on the 16th of July they went on board their lesser ship." Almost one hundred years later, James Knight, master of the Hudson's Bay Company, York Factory, sailed into the mouth of the Churchill River and selected the Munk site as the place to build one of the most formidable fortresses in British North America, Fort Prince of Wales. He wrote: 'Tuesday 16 July (1717). In the morning we did gett up our anchor and went in ... We pitched our tents and I got my bedding ashore but was wellcom'd by such a quantity of musketos that as soon as

8 Early encounters they light or whereever they fix their sting like great wasps that we are nothings in the world but knotts and bumps our flesh is." Samuel Hearne, later governor of Fort Prince of Wales, experienced the agony of mosquito-pierced flesh on his three expeditions to find the Coppermine River and the Arctic Ocean. He was such a stoic that he never complained, except to muse and find things quite comfortable 'had it not been for the muskeetoes, which were very uncommonly numerous, and their stings almost insufferable.' He depended on the country through which he travelled for food, and respected the Chipewyan Indians for their ingenuity and perseverance under duress. Even when going out on the massacre of 'upward of twenty' Eskimos near the mouth of the Coppermine River, the Indians went near naked. He was amazed at this state of undress 'though the muskeetoes at that time were so numerous as to surpass all credibility.' 3 Hearne was to learn of a few other insects while living with the Chipewyans. ~ecause ~is Indian guides always took their women with them, he had ample opportunity to observe all phases. of Indian life. Matonabbee, the Indian leader who guided his third expedition, would put his 'strapping wives to work to louse their hairy deerskin shifts, the produce of which being always very considerable, he eagerly received with both hands, and licked them [the lice) in as fast and with as good a grace as any European epicure would the mites in a cheese.' 4 Hearne did not have a great liking for the lice, and especially not as food. Yet the deerskin dresses, which were hairy, usually supplied a ready store for the wearer. Indeed the chief use that is made of them [deerskins] in Winter is for the purpose of food; and really when the hair is properly taken off, and all the warbles are squeezed out, if they are well-boiled, they are far from being disagreeable. The Indians, however, never could persuade me to eat the warbles, of which some of them are remarkably fond, particularly the children. They are always eaten raw and alive, out of the skin; and are said, by those who like them, to be as fine as gooseberries. But the very idea of eating such things, exclusive of their appearance, (many of them being as large as the first joint of the little finger,) was quite sufficient to give me an unalterable disgust to such a repast; and when I acknowledge that the warbles out of the deers backs, and the domestic lice, were the only two things I ever saw my (1981 companions eat, of which I could not, or did not, partake, I trust I shall not be reckoned over-delicate in my appetite.5

Hearne would, however, eat most of the other delicacies the Indians cooked: 'The flesh of the common black bear was palatable as long as their diet was berries but before these were ripe the bears ate "May flies" [Ephemeridae) which were washed up on the lake shores. These insects were sometimes "lying in putrid masses to the depth of two or three feet." This diet then made bear meat unfit to eat, said Hearne.' 6 Hearne patrolled the Saskatchewan River regions in 1774. In June and

9 Explorers versus insects July the multitudes of mosquitoes made the air boil with insect activity. When one of his men, Robert Flatt, was captured by Indians, robbed, stripped bare, and turned loose, his deteriorated condition, when found, was due more to mosquito and fly attack than to lack or want of food. By the end of the eighteenth century the fur trade was booming and rivalry between trading companies was fierce. David Thompson, the intrepid official geographer and explorer of the Northwest Company, was much too involved in his travels in the northwest to take much notice of insects. However, in northern Saskatchewan in 1796, when he and his men were working their way up a small creek that emptied into the south end of Wollaston Lake, the mosquitoes buzzed around their heads in clouds. Thompson watched with amazement as deer came out of the bush to stand in the water, which served as a safer refuge than the forest from the flies attacking them. 7 These insects were simply accepted as part of living and no one thought of control, merely of avoidance, if possible. In the summer of 1800, Peter Fidler was on the Saskatchewan. Judging from the number of people named Fidler scattered across northern Saskatchewan today, Peter Fidler's zest for living was evidenced in unmistakable terms! While canoeing up the Saskatchewan on 19 August 1800, in the vicinity of present-day St Louis or Batoche he remarked in his diary: 'reached South Branch House this day ... millions of grasshoppers all from the South Branch'; further upstream, on 21 August he saw 'grasshoppers copulating and very numerous.' 8 An invaluable source on insects, Alexander Henry, came west of Lake Superior, passed through the Rainy River region in late July 1800 and entered Lake Winnipeg. On the morning of Sunday, 17 August 1800, he was camped about six miles north of the mouth of the Red River. Having risen early he went duck hunting along the shore but his appetite must have diminished very rapidly at the sight that met his eyes. 'The beach was covered with grasshoppers which had been thrown up by the waves and formed one continuous line as far as the eye could reach, in some places they lay from six to nine inches deep, and in a state of putrifaction, which occasioned a horrid stench.' 9 This was one of the earliest descriptions of the aftermath of a 'locust' outbreak, a plague that made visitations at periodic intervals throughout the ensuing years. The vast numbers of these insects were so remarkable, so awe-inspiring, that no one who witnessed a flight, or saw the ravages produced, could refrain from mentioning them in their diaries. From this point onward the grasshopper was, and remained, a part of the history of this western land. Henry proceeded up the Red River and found that this river valley had grand visitations not only from grasshoppers, but also from mosquitoes. These vicious little

10 Early encounters

pests were to keep him company all the way to 'the Forks,' where Winnipeg stands today, and further south to Pembina, just below the 49th parallel where he overwintered for several years. The mosquitoes may have been partly to blame for the many restless nights he encountered near the Red River. The 'howling of the Indians and their dogs," 0 especially when the former were fortified with the rum which Henry had provided, added to the cacophony of night sounds and prevented sleep. Alexander Henry successfully overwintered on the Red River at Pembina, but was soon overwhelmed by yet another pest: Ever since April 25th (1801) we have been plagued with wood ticks; and now that we are daily in the woods [getting timber to build a new fort) and grass, our clothes swarm with those troublesome and dangerous insects, which often get into the ear and cause inflammation. When they have time to get firm hold they cannot be removed without pulling the body from the head, which remains in the skin, and causes an itching which may last for several months. The bellies of our horses and dogs are covered with them; they adhere to the flesh until they have sucked themselves full of blood and are swelled nearly to the size of a musket ball, when they fall off of themselves. Their natural size is about that of a grain of barley, and in shape they are perfectly flat, with a tough, hard skin, of a chestnut color. They continue to the end of July when they suddenly disappear."

He 'slept in the old (Chaboillez's) fort on the S. side (of the Pembina River). Fleas and wood lice made me very uncomfortable; the former always abound in our old buildings and are very troublesome.' Even in April 1803, when Henry was demolishing some of the old cabins that had been built with poplar logs which had quickly decayed, we find his comments: 'The men began to demolish our dwelling-houses, which were built of bad wood, and to build new ones of oak. The nests of mice were found, and the swarms of fleas hopping in every direction, were astonishing.' When he journeyed to Portage la Prairie on horseback on 24 May I 803 he had to combat flood conditions of the Maraia River, the Panbian (Pembina) River, and Gratias River. There was no wood to make a fire or a smudge, but he had company: 'mosquitoes by the millions, and wood ticks.' 12 Henry returned to his Pembina post where he carried on his trading for the next two years. His yearly trip back east to Kaministiquia (Fort William), via Lake Winnipeg, and his return to Pembina were always hazardous. Besides having loaded canoes he had to fight the elements, namely: 'Water extraordinarily high and continued storms, which breed an incredible number of mosquitoes, obliged to have large kettles constantly smoking in our boat to keep them away." 3 It is difficult to visualize this incredible journey with a live fire in a birchbark canoe while shooting

I I

Explorers versus insects

rapids, portaging over inconceivably rough and primitive trails. Henry made a mask of thin dressed caribou hide wherewith he covered his face and head. This offered considerable protection and permitted him to be more at ease. Just what the native Indians thought of a caribou-hide-covered fur trader, or how they responded to such an apparition, must be left to the imagination of the reader. Later, in July 1806, Alexander Henry and his party again trekked to Portage la Prairie, on horseback. Henry writes:

.

Our course from !the) Panbian [Pembina) river 10 this place [first day's camp) was about N.; the distance about 10 leagues. We passed a very uncomfortable night, the weather was suhry, with thunder, lightning, and rain, and the mosquitoes were intolerable. The women closed the openings of the cabins, and made a smudge inside, but 10 no purpose, ii only made matters worse by choking us with the bitter smoke. If we covered our heads, we were suffocated with heat; ifwe remained uncovered, we were choked with smoke and mosquitoes. I, therefore, thought best 10 gel out of doors, but was then in danger of being trampled IO death by the horses, which surrounded the cabins 10 enjoy the smudge. When, to our great joy, daylight appeared, we instantly collected our horses, and proceeded on our journey ... The mosquitoes continued so troublesome that it was only with difficuhy that we could keep our horses from throwing themselves down and rolling in the water [for all 1ha1 region was flooded), 10 gel rid of these cursed insects. 14

When they reached the swollen Assiniboine River they rafted their goods and swam naked, with their horses, to the north shore. This must have been a mosquitoes' delight, for Henry remarked 'they had their pleasure with us.' They spent a very uncomfortable night on the open plain west of where Headingly stands today. In fact, there were clouds of mosquitoes which so annoyed us 1ha1 we took no supper. It was impossible to sit anywhere out of the smudge, although nearly suffocated by it, and while lying down we were in continual danger of our horses treading on us, as the night was dark, the poor beasts could

not eat, and were continually crowding in the smoke ... [next day) the mosquitoes tormenting us as usual. Our horses, which had little rest last night, were almost ungovernable, tearing up the grass, throwing their forefeet over their heads 10 drive away the insects, and biting their sides till our legs were in danger of their teeth. In a word the poor tortured and enraged beasts often attempted 10 throw themselves down and roll in the water. We also suffered intolerable, being almost prevented from taking breath. 15

Delays and cost increases were commonplace. Henry had to hire, and send on ahead, people who would light smudges at proposed camping or stopping places,

12

Early encounters

and thus drive out the mosquitoes. This made their stopover point liveable and permitted partial relaxation from endless pursuit by these insects. When the party reached Portage la Prairie, the mosquito problem abated somewhat : 'the country is more elevated and the soil, being dry and sandy, may account for the difference.' However, the common house fly seemed to take the place of the mosquito and proved almost as annoying: 'The buildings are full of them, and they make as much buzzing as mosquitoes." 6 Henry's writings also mention insects present in adjoining areas of the United States. In 1806 he travelled to the Mandan villages on the upper Missouri between present-day Williston and Minot, North Dakota. He battled with mosquitoes all the way. He commented on the habits of the Indians, especially that of nude bathing by the women : 'Some few are modest enough to conceal with one hand what should not be exposed to the public view, but even this is done so carelessly as seldom to answer the purpose - a flea or a louse, of which they have good store, will make them raise the hand to the parts attacked, leaving their nudities exposed.' Henry was not averse to writing about his own personal hygiene. When he arrived back at Moose Head Fort on the Assiniboine from the Mandan village, having been gone from his home fort of Pembina from 7 July to 9 August a 'change of linen was very acceptable, as I had worn the same shirt since leaving Panbian river, and it was not entirely free from vermin, notwithstanding daily efforts to destroy them." 7 When returning to Pembina from the Assiniboine he had to cross the flooded Cypress River. He and his party stripped off their clothes and ferried, swam, rafted, and cursed during the several trips they made getting their goods across : Every time I landed the mosquitoes plagued me insufferably, and still worse, the horse I had crossed over upon was so tormented that he broke his fetters and ran away. I was under the cruel necessity of pursing him on the plains entirely naked; fortunately I caught him and brought him back. I suffered a good deal from the sharp-pointed grass pricking my bare feet, and mosquito bites covered my body. ' 8

The territory was unsettled and the scene of a naked man chasing a recalcitrant horse through the shallow waters pursued by clouds of insects was wasted. In June 1807, grasshoppers arrived on the scene once more. Although agricultural production was confined to gardening, the losses were, nevertheless, severe. Henry recalled: Swarms of grasshoppers have destroyed the greater part of the vegetables in my kitchen garden - onions, cabbages, melons, cucumbers, carrots, parsnips, and beets. They had also attacked the potatoes and corn, but these were strong enough at the root to sprout again. The

13 Explorers versus insects swarms appear about the 15th of June, generally in clouds from the S., and spread destruction; the very trees are stripped of their leaves. Grasshoppers pass northward until millions are drowned in Lake Winipio and cause a horrid stench, as I have already observed. They do not make such a formidable appearance every year. ' 9

In 1808, he was off to the unexplored West and the wilds of the Saskatchewan. Near Cumberland House, the 'mosquitoes [were] very numerous and troublesome.' The next year, however, he became aware of some aquatic insects, probably water striders or water boatmen, in northern Saskatchewan: 'Since the ice began to move in the Saskatchewan the thick, muddy water has swarmed with a brown insect, about the size of a bedbug, with two long legs on either side; while the ice was drifting they resorted to the beach, which was covered with them for three days. They have again taken to the water, which seems almost alive with them.' By the time he got to White Earth House in June, these insects and horse flies 'torment our horses dreadfully, and almost prevent them from feeding." 0 Most explorers and fur traders evinced little interest in insects unless they were detrimental to their personal well-being. Daniel Harmon, for example, made only brief references to insects. On 23 July 1802 he recorded an event of nature as he would have done a buffalo or caribou migration past his door. He was at Fort Alexandria on the Assiniboine River: There are at present, in this vicinity, grasshoppers, in such prodigious numbers, as I never before saw in any place. In fair weather, between eight and ten o'clock A.M., which is the only part of the day when many of them leave the ground, they are flying in such numbers, that they obscure the sun, like a light cloud passing over it. They also devour everything before them, leaving scarcely a leaf on the trees, or a blade of grass on the prairies, and our potato tops escape not their ravages. 21

Only spectacular events received mention in the explorer's or fur trader's diary. One of the more unusual observations on insect life was made by John McLean in 1836. McLean worked for the Hudson's Bay Company, and spent some time in the Peace River region: New Caldonia, however, has the advantage over the Old, of being generally well wooded, and possessed of lakes of far greater magnitude; unfortunately, however, the woods are decaying rapidly, particularly several varieties of fir, which are being destroyed by an insect that preys on the bark; when the country is denuded of this ornament, and its ridges have become bald, it will present a very desolate appearance. 22

14 Early encounters

Bark beetles (probably an fps or Melanophila species) had killed some trees, and the continued attack would eventually lead to the complete destruction of the forest. McLean perhaps noticed the insects because Melanophila may have been swarming or in flight, attracted to the smoke of a campfire or a forest fire. 23 The number of beetles in such flights can be very large and it is possible that they came in contact with McLean and his party or even fell into their food. The exploits of Hudson's Bay Company employees were often laced with entomological encounters. The travels of the deputy governor, Nicholas Garry, brought him into contact with many of the marvels of nature. While travelling by canoe down Lake 'Winnipec' on 3 August 1821, he and his entourage entered the mouth of the Red River. Garry was impressed with the large number of pigeons and doves (probably passenger pigeons) so tame they hardly flew away out of the trees, and with 'an immense number of the most beautiful Butterflies of a very large Size.' The unusual and the spectacular were noticed and recorded. Further on up the river, after some ten hours of hard paddling, they arrived at a horse compound where the company maintained its freighting animals. Garry thought the horses were rather small for transporting materials to the Qu'Appelle station and elsewhere, but though they were well bred 'their Sufferings from the Mosquitoes and Sand Flies are dreadful. They were under Tents made of the skins of Buffaloes with Fires before them to smoke off the Flies." 4 Any suffering seen or felt by these early explorers was an item of interest and concern because it threatened their well-being and consequently affected their chances of survival in a strange new land. Long journeys required extensive planning especially if they led into the unknown. Contingencies had to be met, and preparations, particularly against insects, were not always comprehensive. Besides the call of the unknown there was another reason for men to go into the Canadian West - governmental directive. A direct order and an unequivocal willingness on the part of the recipient were an admirable beginning for adventure. Captain John Palliser was commissioned by the British Parliament to explore that part of British North America which lay between the Canada-us boundary and the Arctic Ocean, and between Thunder Bay and the Pacific Ocean. This was an immense territory; if his paths were not strewn with physical hardships, climatic inclemencies, or personal dangers, they were frustrated with insect problems, at least during the summer. The whole length of Palliser's journey through the Rainy River and Lake of the Woods system was fraught with biting flies. On 21 June 1857, on the river and during the many portages, 'our enjoyment was much interrupted by the myriads of musquitoes and bulldog flies which continually tormented us.' Even though the weather remained warm, by 24 June 'the musquito bites [were) more virulent than

15

Explorers versus insects

usual, not only causing our hands and face to swell very much, but leaving bluish marks that in some cases did not disappear till many months afterward." 5 Palliser was observant and he soon realized that biting flies responded to certain meteorological conditions, and their behaviour was guided by specific environmental factors. Rain may have impeded fly attacks but on 26 June 'a steady drizzling rain ... did not preserve us from the incessant attacks of the musquitoes and sandflies.' They attempted to obviate the attack by avoidance: 'Our camp was chosen on the top of this cliff [at Namiken Falls), preferring rather to sleep on the bed of hard rock than on the soft herbage, where our constant foes, could carry on their unremitting attacks.' Yet the wilderness had its pleasurable moments: 'At nightfall we reached our camping place ... elevated about six feet above its surface [of the Rainy River), and covered with a rank vegetation, from which as night drew on, clouds of fireflies issued, illuminating the bushes as they flitted through them.' 26 Nine miles south of the Assiniboine confluence his men had chosen a spot for their camp because of the abundance of grass for their horses; it was ill-chosen, however, for 'the myriads of musquitoes and flies quite prevented their [horses) feeding or resting, until we were obliged to light fires, supplied with green wood, in the dense smoke of which they instinctively sought refuge from their tormentors.' Palliser therefore wisely 'found it necessary to change our plans of early starting, as it is only between the hours of 3 and 7 a.m. that our horses can feed, when the flies ceased their attacks ... [They) rose early but in consideration of the restless night our horses had passed from the attacks of musquitoes, we breakfasted before moving off, thus giving the animals a little time to feed. [By 12 August) the flies had ceased to disturb our horses during the night, owing to frequent frost after sunset, we commenced starting early every morning." 7 Not all insects were venomous or annoying. On 23 July 1857 'a heavy thundershower fell ... since the shower, millions of insects have infested our tents. The interior of the canvass is literally black with musquitoes, and if we could preserve the many species of moths which our candles have attracted we should have a large collection." 8 It is known today that the night-flying moths, or millers, are native to the prairie region; some have become so adapted to domestic crops that they are regarded as pest species. Another present-day pest species of insect was noticed by Palliser because of its spectacular and sudden appearance on the scene. In the Pembina valley on I August 1857 a violent windstorm sprang up, but produced no rain: Along with this wind came what seemed at first to be a low cloud of a brownish-black color, but soon we discovered it by aid of a telescope to consist of myriads of grasshoppers. A breeze springing up from the east met this cloud, and suddenly the insects began to fall as quickly as snow. They soon covered the ground, giving everything a greyish aspect from the color of

16 Early encounters their bodies. When we started the fall of grasshoppers was still continuing though to a lesser extent, but still sufficient to cause us much discomfort from the blows they gave us on the face, as they came down with great rapidity before the wind.'9

Even after a successful buffalo hunt, when they had sliced and dried the meat, 'by nightfall, we had finished, and arranged it [the meat) on poles, with small fires around it, in order to keep off clouds of bulldog flies [blackflies), which, for the first time this season attacked our party [west of Battlefordl.' Although most of Palliser's entomological experiences were painful or annoying, some soothed the weary traveller and salved his psychic being. During the adventuresome trip they relaxed occasionally and watched 'the sheet lightning [as it) continued playing in the northern sky, while the fire-fly, with its feeble efforts, lit up the surrounding coppice.' 30 Henry Youle Hind, explorer, naturalist, and scientist, was commissioned to determine just what use could be made of the Great Plains. Hind had an eye for agricultural possibilities. His narrative, where it concerned insects, was restricted for the most part to those that represented the greatest hazard to crop production - the locusts. He described vividly the swarms, the devastation they caused, and their economic importance. More will be said of this in chapter 2 . However, Professor Hind took notice of several other insects that had not been mentioned previously by other explorers. While travelling about 25 miles west of Portage la Prairie, his party entered the 'Bad Woods' consisting of willows, aspen, and oak: 'The aspens were much disfigured by countless numbers of caterpillars resembling those of the destructive Palmer worm.' 3' Undoubtedly this was the now famous, or infamous, forest tent caterpillar, Malacosoma disstria. Apparently the devastations of this insect occurred periodically, even as they do now. This may account for the infrequent mention of this forest insect pest by early explorers, many of whom may have traversed the territory in years when the population of caterpillars was very low. Hind completed his exploring expedition through the Red River, Assiniboine, and Saskatchewan regions by 1858. He was an enthusiastic advocate of a travel route across British North America and extolled the agricultural possibilities along such a route. The Americans were also very much interested in establishing a transportation route west of St Paul, Minnesota, to the Pacific northwest. It appeared feasible to connect St Paul by road with the Canadian route suggested by Hind. To verify this Colonel W.H. Noble was commissioned to lead an expedition from St Paul through Canada to the west coast. In 1859 his party followed the route from St Paul to Pembina and westward to Turtle Mountain, north to Fort Ellice, west to Fort Qu' Appelle, on to the Elbow of the Saskatchewan, and then southwestward to Waterton, over the Kootenay and Boundary Pass to Washington and Seattle. Dr Augustus J. Thibodo, a Canadian interested in adventure as well as science, was a member of that expedition. Thibodo's diary 3' informs us of many of the

17 Explorers versus insects

zoological species that he encountered. It also includes a number of comments about insects, especially the biting flies. Not only were there mosquitoes, but also along the Souris River one of the greatest torments was the biting of the horse flies. When Thibodo neared the foothills of Alberta he remarked on the many antelope but also 'saw a bumble bee, a wasp &c. the first I've seen since we passed Red River.' 33 This chance remark indicates the presence of bees and wasps of such importance today to the forage crop seed production program. Sandford Fleming was commissioned to survey the 'North West' for purposes of selecting a good site and route for a suggested transcontinental railroad. He, together with the secretary of the commission, Rev. George M. Grant, and their entourage, made their memorable 'Ocean to Ocean' trip in 1872. By the time they got under way the stories about the size and voraciousness of the biting flies had reached eastern Canada and all travellers were aware of their presence. Therefore, before Fleming and Grant left for the west, via the steamer Francis Smith for Fort William from Collingwood, they went shopping for proper clothes to wear on their trip: 'we strolled up to the town [of Collingwood) to buy suits of duck, which were said to be the only sure defence against mosquitoes of portentious size and power beyond Fort William.' 34 They went with preconceived ideas about the country and its insects: Our former ideas had been that it was a barren desert; that there was only a horse-trail, and not always that, to travel by; that the mosquitoes were as big as grasshoppers and bit through everything ... the North-West was to the average man of that day a sub-arctic region, the prey of hailstones, hostile Indians and grasshoppers, British Columbia a sea of mountains, New Ontario a barren wilderness effectually separating Eastern from Western Canada. 35

They were undoubtedly expecting an insect onslaught, or at least hoped to witness a flight of locusts. They had received rumours that the Indians were hostile and the locusts a constant plague, but such rumours were the deliberate plots of many land agents who wanted to encourage settlement to the south in Minnesota and the Dakotas. Immigrants had been informed at St Paul and 'repeatedly warned not to impoverish their families by going to a cold, locust-devoured, barren land, where there was no market and no freedom, but to settle in Minnesota.' 36 Grant found such tales groundless and remarked: 'And of the mosquitoes, and the grasshoppers or locusts, no one ever spoke of, probably because the former are no greater nuisance in Manitoba than in Minnesota or Nova Scotia, and the latter have proved a plague only two or three times in half a century.' 37 Fleming and Grant did not realize how fortunate they were to be in the Red River and Assiniboine regions in mid-summer rather than in early spring. During the latter period, especially when these rivers were at their flood stage, the mosquitoes would have given them just cause to re-evaluate their nuisance value. They were

18 Early encounters very blase about grasshopper outbreaks. Apparently they were at the right place to miss the amassed flights that did take place that year. C.V. Riley, who headed the United States Entomological Commission of 1877, indicated that the migratory locust was present in exceptionally large numbers in Canada in 1872.38 The entomological history of the 49th parallel surveys has a distinct flavour of its own. Everyone was aware that the border, still unfortified, was an easy one to define politically; but to demarcate the physical, geographical, position was anything but simple. The members of the United States Boundary Commission and the British Boundary Commission had to be in the field simultaneously so that their astronomers could plot the position from celestial fixes while the surveyors and engineers marked the position on the ground. Cooks, helpers, drovers, and hunters set up camps and maintained the daily routine of all personnel. The American camps had cavalry to guard and protect expedition members from hostile Indian bands, but no one bothered to consider the insects that would haunt them endlessly. The eastern portion of the boundary, from Lake of the Woods to the Rockies, was not considered to be very important because virtually no permanent habitation or settlement was in existence west of the Pembina Post along the border as late as 1875. There were a few shacks at St Joseph, some tepees at Turtle Mountain, and a few log cabins used as overwintering lodges by buffalo-hunting half-breeds at Woody Mountain. There was no cause to worry about a border that no one saw or used. On the Red River, Fort Pembina, erected by the Northwest Company and taken over by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1821, had been regarded as being on the boundary. It was abandoned in the spring of 1823. Major S.E. Long, of the Topographical Engineers, and his astronomer selected a site on the Red River, after four days of astronomical sightings and measurements, as being on the 49th parallel. They placed an oak post on the west bank of the Red River at that point, the post inscribed 'G.B.' on its north face, and 'U.S.' on its south face. Thus on 8 August 1823, the Pembina border question was apparently settled. Then a lot of 'cooks' came along to 'spoil the broth.' In 1825 Dr J.L. Tiarks questioned the location of the northwestern point of Lake of the Woods. Captain J. Pope, in 1850, doubted the accuracy of the boundary at Pembina. Captain John Palliser did likewise in 1857, as did Niebolay and others, so that the 49th parallel was jostled back and forth from 350 yards to one mile north and south of Long's Post. It was finally decided to have a joint commission investigation; this was done in 1872-'74, culminating in a formal declaration in London in 1875. Reference has already been made to the many insects that annoyed the traders at Fort Pembina. Members of the boundary survey crews expected that mosquitoes would be their principal insect concern. From Lake of the Woods to Dufferin on the Red River, and westward, these pesky creatures were their constant companions.

19 Explorers versus insects

The best they could do, as was done by the members of the British Boundary Commission in British Columbia (see pp. 119-21), was to protect themselves with netting and smudges. Their animals suffered terribly as well. Since they were in contact with their American counterparts, they probably had access to one of the new and highly touted American insect control devices. Dr Elliott Coues, an assistant surgeon, naturalist, ornithologist, and medical officer of the American commission, said of one of these controls: 'the result of repeated trials of the use of "Persian Insect Powders" as a defence against mosquitoes, the article is a perfect failure.' 39 Mosquitoes had to be endured and no man-made remedies, other than cover, fire, and smoke, were on hand. In southern Alberta, in the Milk River district, the grasshoppers had destroyed most of the grass. They had become very prevalent in 1874 and large fresh swarms wrecked havoc on the few fields planted. Some fresh swarms had also been present in 1873. In that _spring the men of the boundary commission, some of whom had overwintered at Dufferin, ploughed up about a hundred acres of prairie with their three-horse teams. This 'farm' was fenced with posts and rails and seeded to oats and planted with vegetables. The venture in farming was doomed because later in the year swarms of grasshoppers over-ran the fields and left them very little. G.M. Dawson, the geologist and botanist of the British Boundary Commission, detailed the exploits of the grasshoppers in the Red River Valley (see pp. 29-30). He also catalogued some of the other insects that were collected: butterflies and various species of grasshoppers and crickets. The insects were submitted to S.H. Scudder for identification. He found 1 5 species of butterflies, 1 I species of grasshopper, and one cricket. 40 They were captured at seven locations in western Canada: Emerson and Lyleton, Manitoba; West Poplar, Roche Perce, and Supreme, Saskatchewan; Sweet Grass, Alberta; and south of Elko, British Columbia (modernday designations). The boundary survey of the western portion, from the Pacific Ocean to the mountains, was begun in 1857 but was not completed until 1862. The greatest amount of time was spent in surveying the line from the Cascades to the Rockies. Charles Wilson was the secretary to the British Boundary Commission, paymaster, and narrator. The encounters with insects were many. Wilson's greatest problem was with mosquitoes (see chapter 8), but other insects proved almost as annoying. Wilson went on a picnic one seemingly fine day, 4 August 1858. The picnic party was given by Thomas J. Skinner, later a member of the first legislative assembly of Vancouver Island. Wilson relates: 'A shower of rain came on & we had to take refuge in an Indian hut & on coming out I found myself literally covered with fleas, actually swept them off my clothes & have been in agonies ever since. The most rigid shaking of blankets & clothes & sweeping out cannot get rid of them though I manage to polish off a few every evening.' 4 '

20 Early encounters

The 'lasting effects' of this picnic ai:ipeared to be commonplace, for every native tepee or lodge had its complement of unwanted insect guests. Fleas and lice were constant companions of men and beasts and accounts of their presence have been recorded since their earliest encounters with Europeans. Buffalo were known to be infested with lice and in the great buffalo hunts some care was exercised not to kill diseased animals, for as described by Kootenai Brown, 'every part of every animal must be used unless it was diseased. Mange was the principal disease, but we frequently found buffalo with lump jaw.' 42 With lice present on buffalo and on man, it was no wonder that all became infested when contacted. At the time of the boundary survey the North-West Mounted Police made their inaugural trek westward to establish law and order. Before they set out on their march on 8 July 1874, the boundary survey had been completed for 420 miles west of the Red River. Reliable information, including insect conditions, about that portion of the country was available from captains Cameron and Anderson. Commissioner French realized, as did his men, that Dufferin was 'the worst place on the Red River for mosquitoes.' But when his men began to swap yarns with the men of the boundary survey, the latter recounted experiences such as : 'Oh mosquitoes! you have not felt any yet; just wait till you get to the Pembina River, or the Souris.' This must have been too much for the new recruits for several of them 'fell out' and quit the force. During the march the men encountered the usual thunderstorms with deluging rain and hail, but they took these in stride. Surely they must have been impressed with the tales of swarming locusts but when they actually witnessed such 'large flights of grasshoppers ... going east' on their fourth day out, they must have been awed by it all.43 Inspector Steele described the sight: While en route west from Fort Garry with new NWMP force after July 8, 1873. At the Turtle Mountains they had rain, now the hail and then sunshine ... but the pattering noise on the tents continued. This proved to be caused by the visitation of locusts, which afflicted the province of Manitoba so sorely that year. The air for the height of hundreds of yards was full of them, their wings shining in the sun, and the trees, grass, flowers, and in fact everything in sight, were covered by them. Even the paint and woodwork of the wagons, and our carbines were not free from their attacks, and our tents had to be hurriedly packed away to save them from destruction. This swarm destroyed the crops of the majority of the settlers in the province, and seed grain had to be distributed for the next season's crop. From the Turtle Mountains as far west as the extremity of the path of the locusts the grass was very scanty; the pests came with the south west wind from their breeding grounds on the great plains. Fortunately their path did not cover the country beyond the Moose Mountains. 44

21

Explorers versus insects Another insect was reported by John L. Paett, veterinary-surgeon of the force:

About three days march (about 22 August I 874) from Cripple Creek one of the horses of B Division was stung upon the sheath by an insect which caused enormous swelling, the animal evinced great pain upon pressure to the parts. Several other horses were attacked by this insect, causing effusion and a great amount of inflammatory action in the parts so stung. But the peculiarity of this insect, as I afterwards had a good opportunity of observing, was that it would not sting a horse in any other part of the body except the sheath. 45

W.O. Haufe suggests the flies were 'snipe flies.' These insects are 'common around the sloughs in certain parts of the rolling sandy areas of south-western Saskatchewan ... Since the NWMP were in the vicinity of Val Marie in late August, the attack occurred at a time that we have observed peak snipe fly activity.'•" Not only were the insects a pest during their westward trek but they also continued to annoy and torment the men after they had reached their destination. At Fort McLeod the assistant surgeon, R.B. Nevitt, complained that 'the horses [were) gray with the swarms feasting on them'; while playing croquet he had 'to stop to kill at a blow 200 to 300 musquitoes.' 47 Even the Jog houses of the fort were not immune from insects. Nevitt relates: I retired to bed pretty early - but could not sleep after lying awake for a long time listening to the crawling scratching moving of some object that appeared to be near my head - either in the woodwork of my bed or in the logs of the building or in the roof over my head - till I could stand it no longer. I got up lighted a candle and searched for the mysterious stranger - I found him just over my head - ready to drop down on me as soon as he had annoyed me sufficiently, it was a "borin" a sort of wood worm about two inches in length of a fat greasy white colour & stupid passionate-reddish brown head - I soon got him out of that and killed him and then retired again and was soon asleep.48

The insect Nevitt described was without doubt one of the long-horned wood borers (Cerambycidae), probably of the genus Saperda or Monochamus. Its early presence in western Canada is thus documented in the privacy of a love letter. The presence of other insects, of medical, veterinary, or household importance, appears to have been well founded. No known remedies were on hand wherewith these pests could be controlled. Most of the travellers and explorers accepted them as a necessary part of living, but all had a constant hope that the scourge could in some way be overcome. The Geological Survey of Canada had sent many expeditions into the West and accompanying these survey parties were naturalists and botanists such as G.M.

22

Early encounters

Dawson and John Macoun. The latter were well-known observers of insect life as well. Their observations included the spectacular exploits of grasshopper migrations and the mosquito multitudes. The presence of other insects appeared to be incidental but some mention is made of horse flies (Tabanidae), very numerous and troublesome in the Peace River region in 1875. 49 While travelling through Pine Pass in British Columbia en route eastward to Pouce Coupe and its prairie lands in August I 879, Dawson concluded: A further circumstance giving the Peace River country and that on the upper part of the Saskatchewan, other things being equal, a value as farming land acre for acre considerably greater than that of most parts of the North-west, is the immunity of this region from visits of the devastating locust or grasshopper (Calopcenus sprctus) ... It must suffice to state here, that while long series of years may pass without the occurrence of serious invasions, these must continue always, or at least for a very long time to constitute a drawback to the whole territory lying south of a line drawn about sixty miles south of Edmonton, and thence nearly following the border of the wooded country southward and eastward to Manitoba. 50

Dawson, of course, could not foresee that with the near extinction of the buffalo the Rocky Mountain locust, Melanoplus spretus, also faded out of the picture. This species would, by the turn of the century, never again pose a threat to agricultural production on the Canadian Great Plains. Other indigenous species would, and did, replace spretus . The Peace River districts were threatened quite often, and even today, by an occasional local outbreak of several other species of grasshoppers. And the territory south and east of Edmonton, as defined by Dawson, has seen its periodic flare-ups of large numbers of grasshoppers, but that has not really deterred man from exploring and settling the Great Plains.

2

Settlers versus insects

Settlement of the Canadian West was a slow process of injecting humans into a great lone land. The fur trade stimulated the exploration of the territory and was responsible for the establishment of key habitations on the main water courses. These small settlements were the forts and 'factories' of the Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Company. Wherever the trading posts were established, people congregated, not as residents for the most part but as itinerants. The plains Cree and the metis were the gypsies of western Canada and sought the freedom of travel rather than the sedentary drudgery of a farmer or urban dweller. However, the fur trading companies were in business to make a profit and expenses had to be curtailed wherever possible. Each fort was instructed to cultivate some land, especially for purposes of producing kitchen vegetables for the staff and oats for their horses. As in all new territories, as more and more land was brought under cultivation greater quantities of food were being provided for the insects that had previously been existing on native vegetation. In many, if not most instances, the insects had to adapt to their new food supply and consequently damage to planted crops was non-existent initially, though it became progressively worse, A copious food supply for humans resulted in a corresponding increase in numbers of insects, an increase causing serious depredations of the crop. That such a sequence of happenings actually occurred at the trading posts is evident from the entries in journals of the factors. When vegetables were first planted the yield was good if frosts were delayed. However, after several years of gardening, the turnips, beets, onions, and radishes were damaged by maggots, the cabbages ruined by the cabbage worm, the potatoes and carrots scarred by wireworms. The most dangerous insects affecting crop production were the invading ones. These fauna were not merely confined to the 'locusts' that periodically overran the small settlements, but included the biting flies. Earlier experiences with mosquitoes

24 Early encounters

by explorers were well known. But cattle and horses, enclosed in pastures or corrals, were particularly susceptible to attack. At White Earth House, in June 1810, Alexander Henry complained, 'horse flies and mosquitoes torment our horses dreadfully and almost prevent them from feeding." The first settlement in western Canada, the Selkirk Settlement, had its share of misfortunes not the least being caused by insects. From its inception in 1812 the Scottish settlers were dogged by misfortune. They arrived too late that year to do much agricultural work and Alexander Macdonell, Lord Selkirk's appointed governor, had personally to sow some winter wheat. In 1813 some spring seeded crops grew well but an early frost caused a complete crop failure. Macdonell insisted that part of the failure was due to 'bad seed, grubs and faulty cultivation." Although crops were good in 1814, the influx of 83 new immigrants and the small plots from which to garner a harvest left only seed for 1815. In 1814 Governor Macdonell also issued a decree that no foodstuffs, including the spoils of the buffalo hunt, the pemmican, were to be exported, especially to St Paul. He further decreed that buffalo running would not be permitted near the settlement. This was too much for the metis, and spurred on by the men of the Northwest Company, Governor Macdonell was arrested and shipped east for trial while the 'bois-brules' devastated the growing crops of 1815, and drove the colonists off to seek refuge at the north end of Lake Winnipeg. They returned in late summer and harvested an ample crop. The intense bitterness between the two fur trading companies led to open war with the massacre of Governor Semple and 19 of his men at Seven Oaks, the emigration of settlers to Jack River for the winter, and no harvest for 1816. Lord Selkirk and his troops restored law and order and returned the settlers to their homes. The crops looked bounteous in 1817 until the day before harvest when killing frosts reduced all to nought except that which could be saved for seed. All seemed well in 1818. Seeding of crops was early, growth was excellent, prospects for a bumper crop were good, when lo! in the midst of all these pleasing anticipations, just as the corn was in ear, and the barley almost ripe, a cloud of grasshoppers from the west darkened the air, and fell like a heavy shower of snow on the devoted colony. This stern visitation happened in the last week of July, and late one afternoon. Next morning when the people arose, it was not to gladness, but to sorrow; all their hopes were in a moment blighted! Crops, gardens, and every green herb in the settlement had perished, with the exception of a few ears of the barley, half ripe, gleaned in the women's aprons. This sudden and unexpected disaster was more than they could bear. The unfortuna1e emigrants, looking up towards heaven, wept.3

25

Settlers versus insects

The disaster apparently was not quite as severe as indicated by Ross, for even though the loss of garden produce was complete, the cereals were only partly ruined. In August Macdonell informed Selkirk: I beg to say that upon the 2nd instant millions of grasshoppers invaded our crops, and eat up all our Barley and potatoes, particularly those in the woods, not a vestige of them left but all the potatoes more on the plains suffered very little injury, the Barley have been eat up everywhere, they have cut the heads of its as clean as an axe would do, and the more green the worst they have done to it. I have, however, ordered all the people to collect the Heads and more particularly those nearly ripe by which the people will have sufficiency of seeds. 4

The wheat crop was well advanced and did not suffer much damage - some food and seed were available for the following year. In 1819, circumstances and nature proved favourable but calamity again fell, not by a new flight of the pestilence of last year, but, still worse, by the countless swarms produced in the ground itself, where their larva had been deposited. As early as the latter end of June the fields were overrun by this sickening and destructive plague; nay, they were produced in masses, two, three, and in some places, near water, four inches deep. The water was poisoned with them. Along the river they were to be found in heaps, like sea-weed, and might be shovelled with a spade. It is impossible to describe, adequately, the desolation thus caused. Every vegetable substance was either eaten up or stripped to the bare stalk; the leaves of the bushes, and bark of the trees, shared the same fate; and the grain vanished as fast as it appeared above ground, leaving no hope either of'seed to the sower, or bread to the eater'. Even fires, if kindled out of doors, were immediately extinguished by them and the decomposition of their bodies when dead, was still more offensive than their presence when alive. 5

The damage done to the crops was so extensive because the number of settlers was probably greater than the tilled land could support, and every acre of broken ground was seeded, even that which might be potentially dangerous because it harboured the eggs of grasshoppers. But seed it they had, as reported to Lord Selkirk by Macdonell: The season was remarkably favourable for crops, but unfortunately the grasshoppers of last year (18 I 8] left their eggs in the ground and upon its being turned up millions of them were seen. We continued our labour, however, to prepare to sow all we could. In the beginning of May the ground seemed alive with these small vermin, though not much injury was done. Upon the 12th of May we had a fine appearance, when, all of a sudden, they increased to such a number and gained such strength that all the crop above the ground was eaten up so

26 Early encounters bare, 1ha1 no vestige could be seen. At this time they could not fly, but kept on the ground, feeding and eating everything before them. The people were now very much alarmed, al the same time continuing their labour in expectation of their going away when they could fly. About the middle of July they began 10 fly in millions in a southern direction, still leaving those 1ha1 were too young 10 fly, and these continued to destroy everything.6

Persisting in seeding the land to cereals, knowing grasshopper eggs were in the ground, seems the height of folly. Entomological information concerning insect control was non-existent and the farming communities were left to the mercies of the locust hordes. The Red River colonists, nevertheless, continued their stubborn resistance against so many adverse factors . The bit of seed left from 1819 was planted early in 1820. All went well until 25 July. The grasshoppers flew in and destroyed the potatoes, barley, and the late-seeded wheat (the seed had been obtained by William Laidlaw from Prairie du Chien in Minnesota). The early-seeded crop produced well. Although the grasshopper infestation was high, total devastation did not follow. In 1821 the 'locust' horde returned. The devastation was not complete, probably because of the smaller sized swarms which damaged crops only in localized areas. The sudden disappearance of the grasshopper in the latter part of July 182 I may have been due to disease, as well as 'a strong northerly wind.' Simpson informed Colville that a blight may have attacked them to decimate their numbers and thus caused their sudden disappearance. In all probability the 'blight' was the wellknown fungus disease Entomophihora grylli, which has wiped out many large populations of grasshoppers in the Great Plains in the last fifty years.7 Although some fears were expressed that the grasshoppers would be present in 1822 because some eggs may have been laid, most of the settlers were optimistic. Macdonell was ambivalent in his annual report to Lord Colville: 'I am able to inform you with ceriainty that the grasshoppers have left us, and there is no appearance of eggs as they have taken their flight in August without copulating, in consequence of which the people have turned up a great deal of land, so that next season will go on well.' 8 In his memorandum for the guidance of settlers, Macdonell was not quite as confident: h is feared these animals will do much mischief this next summer, but it is to be hoped that wherever they were known 10 have deposited their eggs that no cultivation has been anempted. In this way many of the grubs will die and if the land is ploughed once or twice it will be in fine order for the next crop. When these animals appear from the plains, notice should be taken where they deposit their eggs that no cultivation may be anempted there the next season, and persons should be sent to different places to discover where the grasshoppers have not appeared or deposited eggs ; and men and horses ought to be sent there in

27 Settlers versus insects 1he au1umn 10 plough as much as possible in prepara1ion for 1he following summer, al all evenls even in the spring fresh ground may be ploughed for potatoes, and if ploughed deep and the mrf is well turned in, even wheat and barley may be grown enough to preserve a succession of fresh seed. It appears tha1 Indian corn and 1he mos! forward crops escape best and ii is probable tha1 winier wheal will do still belier.9 Here we have, for the first time in Canada, some sage advice for the control of grasshoppers. In fact, it may well be that the 'Grasshopper Governor' was the first economic entomologist in the West. He advised some measures of cultural control, namely deep tillage, the use of resistant varieties in seeding, and survey measures of insect detection. These control principles are still in use today. Though the Red River Settlement enjoyed a relatively peaceful existence, exempt from the ravages of grasshoppers till 1857, other insects, especially mosquitoes, were plentiful. Many of the inhabitants, always short of livestock, were prepared to embark on an agricultural endeavour if the chances of success were good. Horses had been shipped in, in the 1820s; pure bred cattle and bulls were acquired; and sheep were considered to start a wool industry. William Glen Rae, a clerk in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, and nine others bought sheep in St Louis and in Kentucky, and started to drive the 1100 animals northward on 2 May 1833. They lost five in one day to rattlesnakes and then, north of Illinois and into the Dakotas, they herded them through speargrass. The seeds of this grass stuck in the wool, worked their way into the flesh, often with fatal results. Worst of all were the festering wounds caused by the grass needles. Blowflies and other muscids were quick to infest the wounds with maggots so that many sheep, even though sheared to prevent the initial adhering of the grass spears to the fleece, went down through weakness and trauma. All the men could do was to cut their throats and move on. 'It was a sickening experience with millions of maggots infecting the wounds and irritations created by the inescapable seeds. ' 0 Only 241 of the 1100 sheep survived the trip. They arrived at the settlement on 15 September, 1833, in a weak and emaciated condition, a sorry tribute to the devastating effects of needlegrass and blowflies. The presence of biting flies was to be expected in the settlement, but there were species present other than blow flies and mosquitoes. In 1837, Alexander Ross remarked, he inviled a friend to accompany him from one end of 1he settlement to the other ... should he deviate ever so linle from 1he public road, or saunter from 1he pa1h, he is besel and 1ormemed with the blood-1hirs1y musque1oes, rising in clouds at every step, ... In July also the horse-fly, - called in Red River, Bull-dog - are very numerous, and annoying to canle in particular. In August, both musquetoes and bull-dogs disappear, and then the black house-

28 Early encounters fly takes their place, filling the dwelling-houses with their swarms, till the month of October, or the cold, removes them. Picture-frames, windows, tables, victuals, are not here the only objects of attack, but the owner's face and hands suffer also; while his ears are stunned with the perpetual hum, which can only be compared to the buzz of a disturbed bee-hive. These unwelcome visitors are destructive of all peace and comfort, whether sleeping or waking, during their continuance in the colony. 11

So it was, every step of the way; insects lay in wait for man to deprive him of his quiet moments, torment him to distraction, or swarm into the settlement and destroy his livelihood. He learned to live with them and accepted their presence with as much stoicism and fatalism as he could muster. What was happening on the Pacific side of western Canada? By 1824, when the Red River colony was forging ahead after the temporary set-back caused by the grasshopper invasions, the wilds of British Columbia were still largely unexplored. The waterways were known and important fur trading posts, such as Fort Kamloops, Fort George, Fort St James, Fort Okanagan, Fort Chipewyan, and others in between, were fairly well established. Men of the calibre of Simon Fraser, Alexander Mackenzie, James Finlay, and David Thompson had endured inestimable hardships to carve a commercial enterprise out of the mountainous wilderness. However, after the amalgamation of the two fur trading companies in 1821, further expansion commenced on an orderly plan. Governor Simpson was convinced that greater economy and more productive effort could be induced and ordered a retrenchment policy of decreasing imports and increasing agricultural production. He remarked: 'It has been said that Farming is no branch of the Fur Trade but I consider that every pursuit tending to lighten the Expense of the Trade is a Branch thereof." 2 Simpson had a fort built on the Columbia and christened it 'Fort Vancouver' on 19 March 1825. At Fort Colville, near the Kettle Falls, he hoped the company would grow enough potatoes and grain to supply all the people on the Columbia. By 26 November 1826, Fort Langley was in operation on the Fraser River. The price of beaver skins was falling as the need decreased because of changing fashions, and the Americans were threatening colonization in the Pacific northwest. When in the summer of 1842 Chief Factor James Douglas chose the southern tip of Vancouver Island as the site of a new fort, he knew that the fur trading days were over and that agriculture was to replace it. By October 1843 the fort, named Victoria, was nearing completion and workmen had built crude ploughs and oak harrows so that five acres of land could be cleared and seeded by December. The Oregon Boundary Treaty of 1846 established as the line of demarcation between the United States and British North America the 49th parallel, but left Vancouver Island and the navigable Columbia in Canadian hands. By 1849 Fort Victoria was proud of the pigs raised

29 Settlers versus insects and of the fine cattle herds on the North Dairy and Uplands farms, all belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company; for as yet there was only one colonist, a 26-year old Captain Walter C. Grant. 13 By 1853 there were 1,000 Europeans (and 30,000 Indians). By 1860, when Governor Douglas was rejoicing in a new legislative building, farming was well established at Esquimault and Victoria, coal-mining had begun at Nanaimo, lumbering was in full swing at Sooke, and fishing was carried on generally in coastal regions. Gold rush fever brought an influx of mad, scrambling humanity to the Fraser, the Thompson, the Cariboo, and the central regions of British Columbia. The colony on the west coast was firmly launched and no maddening hordes of biting flies, vermin, or forest insects could stop the progress. In the mid-185os, with surveys establishing the border, settlement occuring along the Red and Assiniboine rivers, and miners trekking west, the British and Canadian governments wanted detailed information about the Great Plains region with a view to colonization and transportation. Two expeditions were sent out in 1857. The first was the Canadian Exploring Expedition commissioned by the Canadian government and headed by SJ. Dawson, an engineer, and Henry Youle Hind, a scientist, which entered the west via the usual route of the Winnipeg River. It was instructed to study and report on the natural history, geology, climate and topography, with agriculture and colonization in mind. The second expedition, sponsored by the British government, dispatched an exploration party under the leadership of Captain John Palliser, coming into western Canada via the overland cart route from St Paul, Minnesota. It was to examine the agricultural possibilities of the Great Plains, and also to look for a pass in the southern portion of the Canadian Rockies that might be used by a transcontinental railway. The exploits of these two exploration parties are well known to most readers of Canadian history. Their experiences with insects, during the great grasshopper plague of 1857-58, bear repeating here. Dawson and Hind, coming via canoe from Fort William, experienced all the agonies and bloody attacks from biting flies that travellers in the Lake of the Woods and Rainy River territories fall heir to. Lake of the Woods contained other insect life as well! Occasionally grasshoppers were seen resting on its calm glistening surface, and as we approached Keating Island they increased in number, all of them preserving, with singular uniformity, a direction toward the south-east ... On nearing a small island about four miles east of Garden or Cornfield Island, the grasshoppers on the surface of the lake became more numerous, the green confervae [algae) was visibly Jess in quantity, and before we landed to dine it had disappeared altogether, but the grasshoppers were found in great numbers on the

30 Early encounters shore ... grass, not much destroyed by the grasshoppers, which had evidently only just arrived there, as was afterwards inferred, while those which had been observed scattered over the surface of the lake were probably stragglers from a vast flight of these insects, whose main body we saw subsequently on Garden Island ... The shores [of Garden Island) were covered to the depth of two or three inches with countless millions of grasshoppers, which had been washed there during the gale of the preceding night. The greater number of the grasshoppers were alive, and as the rising sun warmed and invigorated them they spread with much regularity over the field of Indian corn and the potato patches : their progress across the potato patches was like that of an invading army of insects, eating and destroying every living green thing in their way. Before we left the island they had advanced, here and there, some thirty or forty yards from the beach, in a well defined and undulating line, leaving behind them nothing but the bare and blackened stalks of the plants over which they had spread themselves and destroyed. By inclining the head, and seeking shelter from the wind under the lee of a bush, the noise of their jaws could be distinctly perceived; and had it been calm I have no doubt it would have been heard with the greatest ease for a distance of several hundred yards. The Indians had seen the grasshoppers before, but never in such alarming numbers ; they appeared, however, quite indifferent to their progress, and quietly amused themselves as they squatted or lay on the ground, by jerking the intruders off their arms and legs with a thin piece of wood, bent by the fingers so as to act as a spring. 14

Hind's observations show that the vast swarms of grasshoppers that originated on the prairies were often carried by the winds many hundreds of miles east of the Red River Valley . Even in the Rainy River area the vegetation of gardens and crops were subject to periodic visitations. Further, not all the swarms encountered on the Plains were necessarily those of the migratory locust, Calopcenus = Acrydium = Melanoplus spretus . Hind insisted that those on Rainy River were of the species femur-rubrum , the red-legged grasshopper, that is so often very abundant in southern Manitoba, even today. In 1858 Hind was impressed with the grasshoppers during his trek westward as far as the Souris River in southern Manitoba. As he proceeded north of present-day Melita, en route to the Pipestone Creek, he noted: The grasshoppers were very numerous, and during four days filled the air like flakes of snow; they rose simultaneously when about to take their flight, from areas of two to twenty acres in extent, first perpendicularly to the height of twelve or fourteen feet, then in a slanting direction, until they had attained an elevation of from two to three hundred feet, after which they pursued a horizontal course before the wind. In a light breeze, the noise produced by their wings was like a gentle wind stirring the leaves of a forest ...

31 Settlers versus insects On the 6th of July we arrived at Pipestone Creek, and found the country swarming with a young brood of grasshoppers, with wings about a quarter of an inch long, showing that their progenitors had arrived in the preceding autumn in time to deposit their eggs in the soil. Innumerable hosts of these insects passed overhead during the day, and on looking up through an excellent marine glass, I could see them flying like scud at an immense height. Had it not been for the thunderstorms which daily refreshed and invigorated the herbage, it is probable that our cattle would have suffered seriously from the devastations of these insects. 15

Hind thus established that here in the prairie country of southwestern Manitoba the swarms could be 'home-grown.' The vast multitudes were always spoken of as originating in the 'Great Canadian Desert,' somewhere west and south of the settlements in the Red and Assiniboine river valleys. But Hind saw that many hatched in the region and contributed to the general swarms that overran the settlements to the north and east: The grasshoppers at this post had destroyed the crops last year II 8 57), and, at the time of our visit [July), the young brood were well advanced, their wings being about one-third of an inch long. Full grown insects from the south were flying overhead or alighting in clouds around us, so that all hopes of obtaining a crop from the garden or potato fields were abandoned for this year. 16

Further west, in the vicinity of Cutarm Creek, south of present-day Esterhazy, Hind continued to see the winged menace. 'On the 26th the vast clouds of grasshoppers, flying towards the east, passed high over our heads, without intermission, for nearly two hours. It was the last large flight I saw.' The expedition changed course and when it reached the Lumpy Hill, in the present-day Wakaw region, 'grasshoppers were seen during the day flying to the north-east. They are the first that have been observed since leaving the Fishing Lakes on the Qu' Appelle.' 'Grasshoppers were numerous on the north side of the White Sand River [just north of Mikado, Saskatchewan). The crops at Fort Pelly had been beautiful at the beginning of the season, but were all, excepting the potato, completely devoured by the grasshoppers in July." 7 Hind's remarkable descriptions of the grasshopper outbreak of 1857-58 are the first on record to indicate the immensity of the problem facing settlers on the prairies and the whole of the Great Plains of America: The ascertained limits of this mighty army of insects in 1857 extended from the 94th to the 112th meridian, and from the 41st to the 53rd parallel; from settlements in Utah territory to near the Valley of the North Saskatchewan, and from the Lake of the Woods to the foot of the

32 Early encounters Rocky Mountains ... The extraordinary vitality of the eggs ... (the] power of sustaining long flights [are] very remarkable ... Their principal food is the prairie grass and the leaves of shrubs, but they will attack any substance presented to them, even such indigestible articles as leather, traveling bags, woollen garments, saddle girths, and harness. In a few minutes they ate the varnish from the leather case of a telescope I left on the ground in 1858, and so disfigured a valise that the owner who had seen it sound and untouched a few minutes before we stopped to camp, could not recognize it after it had lain ten minutes on the grass. Blankets became instantly covered with them and eaten into holes, the only article of clothing which did not suffer from their voracity was the caoutchouc or gutta percha cloaks and coverings ... The periodical visitations of these locusts have been enumerated among the objectionable features of parts of the Far West ... They will also exercise an important influence upon the future of the southern part of Rupert's Land ... already they have twice destroyed the crops in different parts of the [Manitoba] Settlements. 18

While Hind and his party were in the Red River Valley, north and west of Winnipeg, Palliser's exploration party was approaching from the south. The members noted the damage done to crops by the grasshoppers in Minnesota and the Dakotas; and in the Pembina Valley, on the 49th parallel, they encountered one of the many swarms of that year. Although Palliser did not record very many such encounters, his southern sojourn through the prairies probably occurred when most of the flights had ceased. It was not until 21 September that he arrived at Moose Jaw Creek, near where Moose Jaw stands today. He reported: 'The grass in this arid soil, always so scanty, was now actually swept away by the buffalo, who, assisted by the locusts, had left the country as bare as if it had been overrun by fire." 9 So, having encountered the 'locusts,' the arid climate, and the scanty vegetation, Palliser wrote off the Canadian Great Plains as unfit for settlement or agriculture. In 1864 another great onslaught of grasshoppers commenced in Manitoba: The heat of the summer of 1864 at Red River was so extreme that nobody in the settlement remembered such another ... The droughts prevailed until the middle of July, when rain for the first time visited the parched ground. With it, unfortunately, arrived swarms of locusts which with terrible voracity cleared away the rising crops. The barley was first attacked, after which the leaves were stripped from the wheat, and finally the stalks of the latter were gnawed through immediately below the ear ... During the present year the partial destruction of former times has become an entire failure of crops throughout the colony, so complete that, aggravated as it has been by the unprecedented concurrence of failures in the Plains hunts [of buffalo] and lake fisheries, along with the disappearance from the woods of the generally numerous rabbits, were it not

33 Settlers versus insects for the assistance extended to the settlement, by the charitable in the civilized world, nothing short of a death-burdened famine would await the people during the current winter.

The invasion continued in 1865 : The arrival in spring of vast swarms of grasshoppers proved very destructive to the tender blades of the crops as they appeared above ground. Having devoured all before them they laid their eggs in the ground and took flight. It was hoped that the peculiarly cold weather, which prevailed towards the close of May, when hail fell in large quantities, would have destroyed them ; but it had no appreciable effect. On bright sunny days they might have been seen by the observer, towards noon, in clouds suggestive of multitudes such as the human comprehension fails to grasp. In cloudy weather they generally fell, and, to quote the words of the Nor ' Wester, 'Woe betide the grain fields in or near which the grasshoppers come down, for they stay till they devour everything of value, generally commencing the feast with the grain crops, not even thinking buckwheat beneath their notice, then passing on to the root crops and stuffing their hungry maws with potatoes, cabbages, onions, when particularly greedy include horse radish in their bill of fare, and winding up with a 'chew' of grass and herbs. We have been told that a young man, who was out hoeing potatoes happened to leave his coat for a couple of hours, and when he returned to pick it up he found it covered with grasshoppers, who had succeeded in eating a number of big holes in it" 0

Even though the grasshoppers were numerous in the spring, ' neither the adults, nor the young of 1865 were sufficiently numerous or widespread to do much damage.' 'The harvest of 1865 was better than had been anticipated from the ravages of the grasshoppers in spring. Eventually it appeared that the mischief done by these creatures had been chiefly confined to that part of the (Red River) settlement cultivated by the Scotch farmers."' Again the settlements, or parts thereof, were at the mercy of the grasshoppers. Some farmers did not plant crops in fields known to contain grasshopper eggs, while many relied on the buffalo to supply them with the staples required to see them through the winter. Whether Providence turned a blind eye to their plight, or a deaf ear to their pleas, remains unknown. The restless Sioux took a hand and encroached upon the lands to the south of the settlement, scattering the buffalo that normally congregated and overwintered in the Dakotas. In 1866 'in some isolated spots there had ... been a partial failure, chiefly in consequence of grasshoppers, early frosts and blackbirds, which had exercised a certain adverse influence - the crops of half the parish of St. Anne's, La Prairie or the Poplars were entirely destroyed by the grasshoppers.m In 1867, according to Dawson, numerous swarms poured in, but did little injury, the crops being too far advanced'; but Hargreave says: 'The harvest of 1867, was considerably injured by

34 Early encounters the vast clouds of grasshoppers that lighted at the beginning of the harvest. Almost all the oats and barley were entirely destroyed, the wheat greatly injured. The other sources whence food is principally obtained for the subsistence of the colony gave their accustomed yield." 3 Famine became a stark reality in the autumn of 1868. The dire straits of the settlers received widespread publicity and the Council of Assiniboia granted £1600 sterling for relief. This was augmented by donors in eastern 'Canada' (£3600), the United States (£900), and England (£5000). The small settlements surrounding the trading posts in Saskatchewan were also invaded by grasshoppers. Walter Traill, who was in charge of Fort Qu' Appelle, had his garden well stocked with many growing vegetables. Farming was in its infancy in 1867 and the few grain fields near the Fort showed great promise of a bountiful harvest. One afternoon (reports Traill) I set out in the hope of getting an antelope. It was a bright summer day and as I rode past a field of some twelve acres of barley near the Fort I noticed that the crop was looking splendid and almost ready to harvest. Suddenly I was aware of a heavy black cloud on the western horizon which looked like an approaching storm, but the sky around me remained clear and thinking it was a prairie fire in the distance I rode on until dusk. On the way home I again passed the barley field and it was not too dark to see that it was now a blackened ruin. 'Did you have a fire?' I asked the watchman who opened the gates for me. 'The barley for our saddle horses is all burned.' 'We had no fire,' he said, 'did you not see the grasshoppers?' Then I looked around and saw them three inches deep inside the Fort. They had devoured everything in the garden except roots, stripped the trees, and had fallen in the Jake until the outlet was blocked, and they were piled up on its shores in wind-rows. To prevent them from filling the Fort I had to keep half the men in double shifts carting them out in order to Jive. The ducks and prairie chicken ate grasshoppers until they were unfit for us to eat. Even the eggs tasted of them. The train dogs got fat and the cattle became poor for Jack of grass. The whole valley looked like a burned-over prairie. They came in clouds like smoke and for twelve days the air was alive with them as high as one could see. They darkened the sun and Jay an inch thick on the ground. The Jakes and rivers stink with the dead ones. The frost has at last killed them and some of the vegetables they left. Farming here is all a delusion.2 4

In the Red River Settlement the grasshoppers continued to wreak havoc. They again appeared in 1869, the young in 1870 doing much harm. In 1872, fresh swarms arrived, but as usual, too late to do much damage 10 wheat. Eggs were left in abundance in the northern part of the Province, and in the following Spring the farmers over considerable

35 Settlers versus insects districts did not sow. In 1874, winged swarms again came in from the west, arriving earlier than usual, and inflicting great injury on the crops in some districts. Eggs were deposited in almost all parts of the Province.2 5

The grasshopper plague that had started in 1864 was still causing hardship ten years later. The plague had diminished but little in 1875 but some areas were spared the severe losses sustained the previous year. Wheat and potatoes produced an excellent harvest at Portage la Prairie and in the Red River Valley from Winnipeg to the international border. Further west immense swarms, as seen by Dawson, arrived from the south in a broad band stretching from the 98th (Morden, Manitoba) to the 108th (Val Marie, Saskatchewan) meridian, and from the Cypress Hills to the Bow River valley. The depredatory activities of the Rocky Mountain locust, described by Dawson, were confirmed by many who roamed the Great Plains in 1875. R.B. Nevitt at Fort McLeod related in July that the 'grasshoppers are beginning to get very thick ... [they) are here now and no mistake hundreds of millions of them. I can see them like dense masses in the shadows, in the distant horizon and looking up toward the sun, the air is for miles up an immense moving mass of white wings - grasshoppers sail up in clouds from the earth as one walks. Our poor garden is gone.' 26 The great invasion of 1875 was augmented by local populations that hatched and matured locally. There was an extensive invasion of the forested areas east of Manitoba by swarms of locally produced insects. Areas surrounded by, or within the confines of timberland, such as Carlton and Prince Albert, were relatively immune from invasion. Also, because of the westerly and northwesterly winds in the summer months, no grasshoppers appeared north of the North Saskatchewan River or in the Peace River district in 1875.27 Given its enormity and long-lasting nature, Canadian-American co-operation on the problem became a possibility in the mid-187os. In the United States there was a concerted move to persuade the government to appoint an 'Entomological Commission' to investigate those insects most injurious to staple food sources, particularly the Rocky Mountain locust, army-worm, chinch bug, Hessian fly, and cottonworm. Because such research would be applicable to Canada, the Canadian authorities, and in particular the Entomological Society of Ontario, 28 were strong on Canadian participation and co-operation. A bill was passed by the United States Congress and three eminent American entomologists, C.V. Riley, A.S. Packard, and Cyrus Thomas, were appointed for a five-year term to serve on the commission. They travelled over much of the United States and Riley made several trips through Canada in 1876, proceeding north as far

36 Early encounters as Edmonton, Alberta, and Fort Carlton, on the North Saskatchewan River. Much of Riley's information concerning the entomological problems of the Canadian West came from correspondents such as G.M. Dawson who was associated with the teams of the Geological Survey of Canada that toured the West. Others included the factors of the trading posts, the officials of the North-West Mounted Police in their various outposts, as well as missionaries and the occasional farmer. Their reports indicated that the plague had ended in 1876 in Manitoba, making the province safe for crop production once more. However, the locusts still persisted in Saskatchewan, especially north of the Cypress Hills to the valley of the South Saskatchewan River, and westward to Fort Macleod, where most of the crops were destroyed. Although Manitoba was relatively locust-free in 1877 the rest of the western plains region was expecting trouble. The 'locust' hatch of 1877 was almost unprecedented in most of the western region ; hatchlings were present everywhere. However, unprecedented attacks by natural parasites and predators, plus 'beastly weather' which included cold and heavy rains, seemed to have successfully quelled an outbreak. Surgeon Kittson, at Fort Walsh, found that only a small brood was hatched in the hills on the highlands about a mile from the fort. They were not dense. They occupied a piece of ground about one-fourth mile in length and about 150 yards in width. This was on the 1st of August. They soon disappeared ... This year we have a small vegetable-garden, which is doing well, the number of insects that sojourned not being sufficiently great to do injury . These had their wings loaded with small red mites, a parasite very destructive to the locust. I counted as many as 21 mites on one locust, and seldom less than five. Many also contained one or two maggots (Sarcophaga carnaria ) . They all seemed weak on the wing, and their diseased state was probably the cause of their alighting.29

By November 1877 it was apparent that the grasshopper plague was over. Nature had brought the outbreak to a halt by decimating the 'hoppers with egg parasites of beefflies and red mites. Despite the decline and the near-disappearance of the grasshopper plague from western Canada by the late 1870s, the destructive power of grasshoppers was not forgotten . The United States Entomological Commission was busy with its investigations of the 'locust' problem and had received the support of the Canadian authorities. General recommendations for control were forwarded to the respective governments. Supported by such eminent authorities as G.M. Dawson, it was recommended that 'efforts be made to restrain the extensive prairie fires in autumn which are common to that region [Canada), and subsequently to burn them in the

37 Settlers versus insects spring after the hatching of the young locusts. This plan is believed to be feasible ... The Commission will also ... recommend to the Government a scheme for a system of warning and preventions, through the aid of the mounted police patrol of the Dominion Government, and our signal bureau and military posts.' 30 Their honourable intentions were theoretically sound. However, the 'locust' plague had diminished and control measures were no longer necessary. Memories of the serious consequences of grasshopper depredations started to fade from the mind of the public and from government while more immediate national and international problems came to the fore. Not the least of these was the ever present thought of colonizing the West. The greatest entomological threat to settlement had vanished with the disappearance of the grasshoppers. In the 1870s, the governments of Canada and Manitoba initiated and conducted one of the most intense drives for settlers ever undertaken. Large tracts of land, the East and West Reserves, on either side of the Red River, were set aside for exclusive colonization by Mennonites. These hardworking people came to Manitoba in spite of the adverse propaganda, and between 1874 and 1876, 1,178 families of 5,945 individuals settled on the reserves. The first crop of 1875 was taken from small plantings of poor-quality seed, but very little, if any, harvest was obtained. The grasshoppers, once more the scourge of the settler, had devastated the crops. 3' However, they managed to weather the crop-killing frost of 1876 as well, and with a cessation of the insect plague, rapid expansion of the agricultural communities was possible. Governments were aware that the news of the grasshopper plagues would keep immigration and colonization progressing at a snail's pace. Rupert's Land had been admitted into the Confederation, and the Dominion Government had gone far with the survey of Manitoba with a view to its settlement. Immigration agents had been sent out to Britain, to Europe, and to the United States. A great tide of immigrants was expected to set in, but all the efforts of the Dominion Government were brought to nought by those diminutive creatures, the locusts of the plains. The settlers refused to come to a land cursed with one of the plagues of Egypt.32

A House of Commons committee investigated settlement conditions in the West. Senator John Sutherland, a farmer from Kildonan (Winnipeg), when questioned on 3 April 1876 about the actual conditions of farming, said: I think that extensive settlement will prevent the ravages of the grasshoppers, and we have good reason to believe that we will be exempt from them during the coming season, as there were no deposits of eggs in the Province in 1875, and in all probability we will be relieved

38 Early encounters from that plague for many years to come. To my own knowledge the Province was not affected by grasshoppers for forty years previous to 1867, since which date we have had them off and on every two years, or each alternate year.33

On 24 March 1876 Professor Macoun who had travelled over the western plains and to the Peace River some years earlier, had stated: Grasshoppers from their very nature cannot be yearly visitors, but are almost certain to be occasional ones. It seems to be a law that insect pests eventually breed their own destruction. This seems to have been their history in the past, and I believe will be the same in the future. A few reached the South Saskatchewan in 1875, but none have ever been seen on Peace River. Owing to the belt of timber which intervenes between it and the Saskatchewan, they can never injure that fine country, nor will they ever do much damage in the Saskatchewan country, as they are likely to move towards the east and north, which takes them away from it. I know of no mode of prevention except tree planting, which will be at best a slow process.34

A third 'expert,' Kenneth MacKenzie, a farmer from Portage la Prairie, spoke in 1873 about conditions from 1869 to 1873: I have heard some complaints of grubs [probably root maggots), but have not suffered any by them on my crops, and I have sown turnips in May and they did well, and all through June, and no flies to hurt ... [the settlement has not been troubled by grasshoppers) since I have been here. I am eight miles west of Portage la Prairie, and no settler was [bothered) before me west of the Portage ... In 1868 they destroyed all from Portage at that time to Fort Garry, and all settled. This year (1873) they destroyed all down on Red River or around Fort Garry, and partially up the Assiniboine River, up to Poplar Point, but no farther. There are several fair crops in Headingley and White Horse Plains, ie., halfway between Poplar Point and Fort Garry. I cannot positively say [that the grasshopper plague will continue when the country is better settled and more land cultivated), but think their ravages are partial. Some may suffer, while others escape. They only made three clear sweeps, I am told, since l 81 2, when the country was first settled, and then all the portion that was settled was a small spot round Fort Garry. Rev. Mr. Nesbitt had a good crop in Prince Albert Mission, Saskatchewan, in 1868.35

Up to this time the principal settlements in Manitoba had suffered intermittently, but severely, from the depredations of grasshoppers. Control measures were relatively unknown and very little information was made available to the farmers so that they could protect their crops; economic entomology was a relatively unknown subject. Individuals such as G.M. Dawson had made some recommendations to the

39 Settlers versus insects federal government, which in themselves were far-reaching, for some of his basic precepts are still practised today: a. By a system of inspection, in which many men need not be employed, the chief localities in which eggs were deposited in the autumn, over immense areas, might be learned. b. By the use of smoke, which is allowed to drift across the fields from smothered fires or 'smudges,' many of the insects may be prevented from alighting. c. ... a process called 'roping' [in which) a horse being fastened to each end of the rope las) it is dragged to and fro across the field, brushing the insects from the stalks, and often causing them at last to fly off. d. They may also be caught in great numbers in scoop-nets and bags, especially when somewhat torpid, in the evenings and mornings; and where the area affected is limited, this may be usefully employed. e. The method of destruction which seems to have been found most successful ... is fall ploughing. f. Of more limited applicability is the collection of the eggs by hand ... aided if need be by government bounties. g. Burning the prairie in dry weather. h. the use of heavy rollers. 1. driving the young insects together by converging circles, and destroying them with flat wooden shovels. j. driving them into straw, which is afterward fired, or into fires, streams, or ditches. k. large flocks of domestic fowls ... will materially assist. I. fields may be protected from the young insects wherever a ditch of moderate width surrounding them, can be filled with water. 36

Colonization of Manitoba was progressing favourably despite the slow start, and an increase was imminent especially after the transcontinental railway was built. So in spite of the insects, and especially the grasshoppers and the mosquitoes, the Canadian West was coming into its own. What of the Pacific colony? The gold fever of the fifties had brought in thousands of get-rich-quick itinerants, many of whom perished, moved on to Alaska, or returned home. A few stayed to man the productive mines and the expanding forestry and lumber industry, or took to ranching. The government of British Columbia, under Sir James Douglas, completed in 1862 the Cariboo Road linking the interior with the coast, and placed the seat of government in New Westminster. Then Victoria, on Vancouver Island, joined in a union with the fledgling province of British Columbia in 1866. By 1869 only 8500 non-native people remained in the whole of the pro-

40 Early encounters

vince, for most of the transient population had disappeared. Settlement was sparse and widely separated, with agriculture confined to about 1200 acres on 300 farms in the delta and the lower Fraser Valley at Hatzic, Langley, and Sumac.37 There is no doubt that the insects of garden and field exacted their share of the domestic foodstuffs planted or stored by the settlers. If some species of insects proved to be pests no action was taken against them and little was said. The pioneering spirit was too stoic to be diverted by seemingly small adversities. Then on 20 July 1871, British Columbia was admitted to Confederation. Many of the citizens of the new province were of British ancestry, and a small but influential group still clung to old country customs and maintained certain standards of the upper-middle class and landed-gentry background even under the stresses of frontier life. Some of them had financial security, others received 'allowances' or had reached economic security by sound investment and hard work. Most of this small elite were well educated and had brought extensive libraries with them. They contributed scientific articles to learned societies, as well as indulging in a myriad of hobbies, such as riding on fox hunts (in the interior they ran coyotes!), playing cricket, or collecting butterflies. From this segment of the population governors Douglas and Seymour recruited the civil service. This segment also made the initial contribution to the natural sciences of all the western provinces. These were the men and women who were to become the first biologists of the new provinces of British Columbia and Manitoba first as amateur naturalists and then as professional entomologists. These are the people who blazed the 'insect trail' across this western land, who dedicated their efforts with unrestricted zeal to a fledgling science; the names of its members to be the unforgettable foundation building stones in the annals of pure and applied entomology in western Canada.

3 Collectors and naturalists

Man is, has been, and always will be, an inveterate collector. For those with a flair for natural history, what better way to appease a natural curiosity than to collect the objects of nature? Insects, having adapted to conditions in every conceivable habitat including that of man, have become the constant companion of man and the object of his interest: 'Observation excites curiosity, curiosity leads to enquiry, enquiry tends to increase knowledge, and the more one knows, the more one desires to know. And natural history subjects are so diverse in their manifestations, as to provide something suited to every taste." So it was with the many settlers in the early years in western Canada. They had to interest themselves in all things of the frontier and especially in things that affected their livelihood, their crops, and their families. Many were of educated families bringing with them vast stores of knowledge of plants and animals, including insects. Many of the learned men of the day were educators or missionaries. These were among the first to attempt to identify the insect fauna that they collected. Most of the other collectors were content to capture specimens, either for their own 'collections' or for some foreign museum. They were among the best of the world's correspondents, for they knew one another, as well as the 'experts' who could identify the captures they had made. These amateurs were the backbone of entomology. They gave the science of insects the drive and initiative it needed to stay alive. Their sustained interest maintained entomology even in the isolated homestead. Of course, scientific expeditions preceded the amateur collector into the uncharted frontiers of western Canada. Their members catalogued the few insects they were able to find in the vast reaches of the northern and western regions. Sir John Richardson, surgeon and naturalist with the Sir John Franklin expeditions of 1825 to 1827, was among the first to collect the insects west of Hudson Bay. Along the Red River and Lake Winnipeg to The Pas on the Saskatchewan River, he

42 Early encounters collected species of at least ten orders. Because Richardson had a preference for beetles, these were the most abundant in his collection: 345 specimens of the 441 captured.' The expedition of Captain George Black, from 1833 to 1835, was sponsored by the British Government and by private donors, in the hope of finding Sir John Ross who had been lost in the Arctic. Black followed the route of Franklin and included in his company the ship's surgeon and naturalist, Richard King. Apparently King was not much of an entomologist, for he collected only a small number of insects. These are listed along with those captured by Richardson, in accounts by Archdeacon W.W. Kirkby who collected avidly at Island Lake, York Factory, and Fort Simpson from 1858 to 1861. 3 Probably the most credit for initiating and continuing the collecting of insects in western Canada must be given to the Geological Survey of Canada. Its directors and associates, such as Robert Bell, G.M. Dawson, John Macoun, J.B. Tyrrell, and D.B. Dowling, were ardent geologists and naturalists. They concerned themselves not only with the rich and abundant natural resources of the region - lumber and trees, coal and minerals, fish and fur-bearing animals, resources of direct benefit to settlers - but also with the economic benefits of soil, transportation, and climate. These men were inveterate collectors and insects were not neglected. G.M. Dawson's trips across western and northwestern Canada had some specific entomological overtones, but these were largely associated with the locust plagues of the 1870s. His descriptive picture of these insects and their ravages was mentioned earlier. However, Dawson was ever on the alert to ascertain why this vast land should, or should not, be settled; what its good or poor points were, its disadvantages, and so on. By 1882 rail transportation was very expensive and alternative routes, by alternative modes of transport, were sought by the government of Canada. For this reason water navigation through Hudson Bay was given serious consideration; several expeditions were dispatched in 1884-86, with Captain A.R. Gordon in charge. Professor Robert Bell was the scientific officer on board Captain Gordon's ship. He, for many years, had also been director of the Geological Survey of Canada and had taken part in many field party explorations in the West. Not only was he interested in geological specimens but insects also struck his fancy, especially the beetles. In 1879 Bell had explored the region of the Churchill and Nelson rivers, as well as the territory around God's and Island lakes. Here he had collected beetles later identified by J.L. LeConte; 38 species were found. However, he did not confine his captures to beetles, but also collected the moths and the butterflies of the region. At Churchill, York Factory, and to the north of Churchill on the west side of Hudson Bay, he collected 29 species. These were identified by a 'Herr Getfcken' of Stuttgart.

43 Collectors and naturalists Part of Bell's collection of butterflies consisted of captures made by Archdeacon Kirkby, who had given them to him in 1859. In 1880 he collected in Manitoba, between Lake Winnipeg and Hudson Bay. He was able to capture 27 species of beetles at York Factory, 41 between Norway and Oxford houses, 38 at Fort Garry, and 36 at Gross Lake on the Nelson River. 4 These 142 species of beetles contained some species whose food was the stored products of man. The larder beetle and the yellow meal worm were found at the Hudson's Bay posts of Oxford House and Norway House. These forts were storehouses where the pests would find ample food to sustain them, after being brought there in infested foodstuffs. At Fort Garry, the wireworm, Agrioces sp., was found a ready-made pest of cereal crops planted by man. In 1881 Bell and others collected in the Lake Superior district, and in the Northwest Territories, east of the 112th meridian (that is a north-south line through Vegreville, Brooks, and Taber, in Alberta), and south of the 60th parallel. Once more a large number of beetles of the local fauna were included by Bell from Nelson House and from an area lying between Lake Winnipeg and Hudson Bay. William Isbister, an employee at Nelson House, contributed 51 species of beetles that he had collected at, and northwest of, Nelson House near the Churchill River. A.S. Cochrane, presumably another employee of the trading company, did considerable collecting while at the trading posts. He gave his collection to Bell; these were eventually identified by LeConte. Cochrane collected 19 species in the area of the Nelson River between Cross Lake and Cumberland House, a further 19 species north of Cumberland House to Reindeer Lake, and yet a further 8 species west of Reindeer Lake to Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca. 5 These 166 species of beetles provided a fairly good informational basis of the entomological fauna in the northern portions of the prairie provinces. Although the collection was limited to beetles, Cochrane did provide creditable information on indigenous insects south of the tundra line. This, together with Isbister and Bell's captures, gave entomologists a 'hat rack' on which to hang future work. Such work would not only include the collecting, identifying, and naming of specimens, but also the determining of the economic status of each potential pest species. After the Geological Survey teams had traversed much of the northern portions of the prairie provinces, they devoted some time to the more southern regions. Central Alberta and the adjacent Saskatchewan Territories were surveyed in 1884-86. Included in the general collection of rocks and flora made by J.B. Tyrrell, who was in charge of the Geological Survey, were the moths and butterflies. These collections were made in 1884 and 1885, while he was in charge of field operations. In 1886 D.B. Dowling took charge of the survey team, but continued to collect the insects as well. All specimens captured were given to James Fletcher, who was then the 'Honorary Dominion Entomologist,' attached to the Dominion Department of

44 Early encounters Agriculture at Ottawa. Fletcher identified the specimens and listed 17 diurnal Lepidoptera collected principally in the Red Deer River region of Alberta by Tyrrell. There were 19 diurnal species collected by Dowling near Edmonton, Three Hills, and the Vermilion River district. In addition to the latter, Dowling also captured 10 species of nocturnal moths near Buffalo Pound Lake, Edmonton, and in the Battle River region.6 Many early naturalists were interested in more than just insects, as was the case with many of the factors of the Hudson's Bay posts. One such man, George Barnston, at Norway House, collected the beetles of the area. It was later found that Barnston had captured 79 species of which 25 occurred at Norway House, 12 at Carlton House, 59 at the north end of Lake Winnipeg, and 14 in the Mackenzie River and Great Slave Lake districts. 7 Many of the same species of beetle were found in more than one locality. Today, when we look at the list it is of interest to learn that the virgin regions of northwestern Canada contained many of our well-known ground beetles, wireworms, stored product insects, water beetles, and leaf beetles. Many of these have, no doubt, become pest species today; but it is just as likely that some, like the stored product insects, were introduced by the employees of the Hudson's Bay Company when they arrived with foodstuffs brought from eastern Canada, or from overseas. A few early American explorers and entomologists were interested in western Canada. The entomologists were primarily specialists in insect classification and taxonomy, and were interested in learning more about the new and unnamed species in the northwest of British North America. The expert on beetles, J.L. LeConte of New York and Philadelphia, examined many of the collections, particularly those of the Pacific northwest. Many collected specimens are probably in the museum collections of American institutions, and only an exhaustive search would reveal the dates, places, and names of collectors of these early acquisitions. However, some specific information is available. John Keast Lord, a British naturalist associated with the Anglo-American Border Survey of the 49th parallel in 1858--62, collected 148 species of insects from British Columbia and Vancouver Island. These included 24 species of moths and butterflies, I lace wing, 94 species of beetles, 4 species of flies, I true bug, 23 species of bees and wasps, and I spider; when LeConte examined these in 1870, he found many species were not new and the collection not as significant as formerly assumed. 8 Henry and Joseph Matthews collected 186 species of beetles on Vancouver Island in 1869.9 These were identified and catalogued by LeConte, as were those of the second batch of beetles collected in 1875 under the auspices of A.R. Selwyn of the Geological Survey of Canada. LeConte's second list, published in 1877, contained

45 Collectors and naturalists 153 species of beetles from British Columbia.' 0 These beetles had been picked up while on a geological survey through the interior of British Columbia, north and west of Quesnel, in the Chilcotin district. Some were collected near the Finley River and in the Upper Peace River country. The collection was noteworthy because it was a very good indicator of what 'home grown' species were present in the area. The species that he found incuded tiger beetles, water boatmen, water striders, leafand laby-bird beetles, wireworms, and bark beetles. Samuel H. Scudder, an American expert on the taxonomy of grasshoppers, travelled by canoe down the Red River in 1860. He followed much the same route as that taken by Richardson thirty-five years earlier. On this trip through Manitoba, Scudder collected 14 species of grasshoppers and crickets, and l praying mantis. 11 In British Columbia, the first offical entomologist in western Canada, Rev. George W . Taylor, was appointed Honorary Provincial Entomologist in 1887. Taylor had arrived in Victoria as a young man, in 1882, having a decided interest in natural history. He was a member of the Zoological and Entomological Societies in England and had had considerable scientific training. When he went scouting for insects on the island, he was much impressed with the extreme abundance of butterflies: Nearly 40 species may be marked abundanl. A patch of blossom in May, covered with Blues and Friuillaries, with an occasional Colias and two or three magnificent species of Papilio, is a sight such as an English entomologist, at least, never sees at home, and later in the year the hundreds of Vanessa, Chrysophanus, Pamphila, and l,imenitis make a very different but not less beautiful picture. 12

His exuberance and energies knew no bounds where butterfly collecting was concerned, The magnitude of such devotion to a science was witnessed by Peter Venables, who later was a staff member of the Dominion Entomological Laboratory at Vernon, British Columbia. Venables relates that in the Anglican church in Nanaimo, while Taylor was delivering his sermon, 'a desireable specimen [of butterfly) was hovering round the pulpit light ... with a few deft passes of a cyanide bottle [he) captured the insect with no interruption of his discourse." 3 Taylor collected assiduously, especially the 'Diurnal Lepidoptera.' An excellent collection of Vancouver Island butterflies was donated to the Entomological Society of Ontario in 1884. The beetles he collected were sent to, and identified by W. Brodie of Toronto, while the rest of his many captures, of all orders of insects, were described and immortalized in the I 8 scientific papers he published in various scientific journals. Another minister, Rev. Henry Matthews, had preceded Taylor on Vancouver Island in the l 86os. This gentleman was also born in Britain and reared in the

46 Early encounters tradition of having a general interest in nature in a country where amateurism was well ingrained, and he turned to the collecting of insects. Rev. J .H. Keen, of the Queen Charlotte Islands (Metlakatla), was the collector of insects in the 1890s. One need only browse through the late nineteenth-century issues of the Canadian Entomologist to appreciate the effort, devotion, and time he spent in collecting the many species of beetles, moths, butterflies, and bugs recorded there. These three ministers were the early insect collectors on Vancouver Island, where, even as late as 1890, little seemed to have been done, or written, concerning the fauna. Others were collecting just for enjoyment in their leisure hours. A banker, A.W. Hanham, who was a keen collector of butterflies and beetles, had come to Winnipeg in 1893 from eastern Canada and finally settled in Duncan in 1905, after four years in Victoria. His efforts in entomology may be traced back to 1884 through his writings in the Canadian Entomologist but his achievements in collecting and describing the Manitoba butterflies and moths attest to the professional manner in which his hobby was conducted. The first all-inclusive lists of the moths and butterflies of Manitoba were compiled by Hanham. Some of his early captures are records that have not been repeated to date, although faulty identification of species may be the cause of such precedents.' 4 He gave most of his collection to the province of British Columbia, and the Provincial Museum is the richer for his efforts. In 1894 W.A. Dashwood-Jones joined the staff of the British Columbia Land Registry Office. This energetic man had collected birds' nests, flowers, and butterflies, as a boy in England; and he never outgrew, or outlived, his love for the objects of nature. Even while working on a railroad construction job at Yale and Drynock, as an express manager at Port Moody, or in a salmon cannery, he spent his leisure time collecting butterflies and moths. A fire in the Court House in New Westminster reduced his efforts of half a lifetime, - his complete insect collection - to ashes. The loss was irreparable and, though he continued his entomological work, the results were to remain inferior to his initial endeavours. The Tring Museum in England, operated by the Rothschild brothers, was the only benefactor for it has some of the butterfly captures of Dashwood-Jones displayed in its showcases. By the late 1890s the Kootenay districts were well stocked with miners and men of the building trade. An architect, Harry Cane, was in Nelson in the midst of the mining boom. In his spare time he captured the various moths and butterflies of the region. His collection, of some 220 species, was all caught in his garden, a remarkable achievement for an amateur. He later gave the collection to a fellow collector, H.R. Foxlee. In the Lower Okanagan, at Osoyoos, lived C. deBlois Green, whose interests in entomology dated back many years prior to 1893. In that year he and W .H . Danby undertook to write a 'Report on the Entomology of British Columbia." 5 They listed all captures made in the province to 1892, 90 species of butterflies, 71 moths, flies, beetles, and spiders, as well as some economic pests like the oakworm caterpillar,

47 Collectors and naturalists Lambdina somniaria, that had defoliated the oak trees in Beacon Hill Park during the preceding four years. The report, though brief, indicated that the state of entomology in British Columbia at that time was rather primitive, both in taxonomic and economic aspects. Mrs Marianne E. (Hippesley) Clark was a coleopterist of note from the Terrace district of British Columbia. She had started collecting insects as a child of 11 when she moved from Leeds in England to the Dauphin district of Manitoba, and later to Terrace. By 1922 she had captured many beetles, sufficient to publish lists of the beetles of Terrace. Such lists, by 1959, included 659 species, exceeding by 150 species 'the longest list of beetles ever recorded from any locality in the Pacific Northwest." 6 Only two small 'store boxes,' containing rare and valuable specimens of beetles, remain of her extensive collection. These were bequeathed to the University of British Columbia, along with a home-made cabinet in which to house the acquisitions. Her library was also left to the university.

One of Manitoba's collectors of note was a married man, with an ailing 12-year-old son, who homesteaded near Cartwright in 1882. He was E. Firmstone Heath, who named his homestead 'The Hermitage,' probably quite aptly because Fletcher described it as being 'six miles across the prairie from Cartwright, which is almost like six miles from nowhere." 7 Despite the hardships of making a living on a homestead, despite his dire financial straits and partially paralysed physical condition, Heath had one of the finest butterfly collections in the northwest. He corresponded freely and exchanged specimens with all amateur insect collectors and became a recognized authority for the identification of certain genera and families of Lepidoptera. The Heath collection of insects, bought by the Manitoba government in 1914, was re-arranged by J.B. Wallis of Winnipeg, and by F .H. Wolley-Dod of Calgary. Though it was thought to be of inferior quality by Wolley-Dod, it remains a 'mine of information concerning the Lepidoptera of southern Manitoba." 8 The collection reposes today in the Department of Entomology Museum at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. A.J. Hunter, a medical doctor, of Teulon, in the inter-lake region of Manitoba, was a medical missionary in charge of the local hospital. His days were exceedingly full ones, but he still found time to collect insects. He and the local school teacher, W.A. Cummings, were able to transmit, and instil, some of their own love and zeal for entomology into many of the local children. Hunter's collection of insects, a gathering of carefully mounted and labelled specimens, was garnered over a lifetime. Fortunately, these have been preserved and were given to the Department of Entomology, University of Manitoba, by his daughter, Elizabeth Hunter, in 1964. A.J . Dennis of Beulah devoted his spare time to the collecting of diurnal Lepidoptera; his medium-sized collection was purchased by another amateur collector,

48 Early encounters G. Shirley Brooks, but is now in the Museum of Man in Winnipeg. Other collectors of insects in Manitoba were J.D. Duthie of Winnipeg, H.W. Boger of Brandon, and LE. Marmont of Rounthwaite, the latter an avid coleopterist until he moved to Coquitlam, British Columbia, where his interests switched to the micro-Lepidoptera. Saskatchewan seems to have had fewer amateur entomologists than Manitoba in the late nineteenth century. Included in the list of correspondents who reported insect activity to James Fletcher after 1884 were some who resided in Saskatchewan. Respondents such as G.S. Johnson of Moose Jaw, Rev. Clement Hoyle ofDundurn, and Eugene Conbeaux of Prince Albert were interested in insects. Although there is no evidence they collected insects as a hobby, they were interested in the economic species and therefore reported any local insect damage to the federal authorities. In Alberta an early and influential collector was T.N. Willing. He farmed near Olds in the late I 88os and was especially interested in weeds and their control. This brought him into touch with James Fletcher, who was not only the Dominion Entomologist but also the Dominion Botanist and therefore responsible for plants. Fletcher encouraged and induced him to make extensive insect and weed collections. When the position of 'Weed Inspector' for the Northwest Territories became available, James Fletcher was instrumental - his recommendations carried a lot of weight - in having T .N . Willing appointed by the territorial government. This required a move to Regina where he carried out his duties as weed inspector and game guardian with expert diligence and efficiency. His insect collections included all orders of insects, most of which remained in the Saskatchewan Museum and at the University of Saskatchewan. Willing was appointed a professor of biology at the University of Saskatchewan in I 9 I 5. Because of his extensive travels throughout Saskatchewan and Alberta, he was able to collect a vast array of all species of insects, especially those having economic significance. Many of these captures were made at the request of, and especially for, the National Collection in Ottawa. Insect collecting was done as early as I 890 in the Laggan district by J. Bean, a Canadian Pacific Railway official, and in the Midnapore district by A. Hudson. Both men collected moths and butterflies. The insects collected were, for the most part, identified and named by experts in the United States. Several species were named in honour of their collectors. C.G. Barrett of Didsbury, Alberta, and Thomas Baird of High River were two ardent collectors of the Lepidoptera in Alberta at the turn of the century. The latter took particular note of the flies, although he collected any and all species he could find. He was one of the few who realized some monetary return from his hobby, having sold all of his captures to private individuals.

49 Collectors and naturalists

In 1901 entomological papers began to appear, written by F.H. Wolley-Dod. He was 'one of the two leading Lepidopterists on the North American Continent.' Being a man of independent means, he lived the life of a near-hermit on his ranch in the foothills of the Rockies. He visited the great museums of the United States and Europe. His assistant, W.H.T. Tams, did much of the routine rearing of insects, the preserving of specimens, and general curatorial duties for Wolley-Dod. So good was Tam's training under Wolley-Dod, that when he returned to England at the onset of hostilities, in 1914, he was immediately appointed Curator of Lepidoptera at the British Museum of Natural History in South Kensington. Wolley-Dod collected extensively in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and examined and identified moths and butterflies for others from all parts of Canada, Europe, and the United States. He joined up during the First World War when his age and physical condition went unrecognized in favour of his zeal and loyalty to his country, and he died in battle. His private collection was bequeathed to the federal government for the National Collection in Ottawa. E.H. Strickland was given the task of crating and dispatching it to Ottawa, in the spring of 1920. With snow still deep in the foothills, entry to the ranch, and exit from it, with a truck carrying a ton of moths and their cases, was an adventure that taxed even the most ardent and zealous lover of insects. Not all collectors were specialists. Norman B. Sanson was a naturalist who started out west as a member of the Queen's Own Regiment to aid in the suppression of the Riel Rebellion of 1885. He liked the West and decided to stay in Alberta after his hitch in the military was completed. He collected anything that was an insect, and after leaving Calgary in 1892 he was appointed Director of the Banff Museum. The large collection of insects, most of whose specimens he had captured, as well as the museum, fell into disrepair when he retired just before the Second World War. Had it not been for the enthusiastic entomological acitivity of Sanson much of the early natural history of the Banff region would have been lost. One of the most unusual collectors of insects was Percy B. Gregson, of Blackfalds, Alberta. His specialty was fleas, and as early as 1895 the fleas collected by him formed part of the Rothschild Collection in England. He was ever concerned with the economic aspects of entomology and spent a considerable portion of his mature years developing a sense of natural history in the children, and the older folk, of the Red Deer area. He was instrumental in the formation of the North-West Entomological Society (see chapter 5), and lectured monthly in schools and at public meetings about insect collecting, insect control, weeds, and agriculture. His brother, Arthur D. Gregson, arrived in Calgary in 1885. Arthur had been suffering from tuberculosis at his home in Sussex. Homesteading at the junction of the Red Deer and Blindman rivers, trapping fur-bearing animals in winter, and collecting fleas for the Hon. Nathaniel Rothschild dispelled his consumptive condi-

50

Early encounters

tion. Fleas were sold to Lord Rothschild for six pence apiece and provided a ready source of income during hard times. Gregson is credited with collecting the type specimen of the black swallow-tail butterfly, Papilio nitra, described by Edwards. The early twentieth century saw the emergence of the entomological societies and the organization of the discipline as a profession. Throughout the West, however, the tradition of extensive private collections of insects remained a vital element in the expansion of entomological knowledge. Some of these were amassed by people collecting as a hobby, while others were put together by those involved in some professional capacity in the study of insects. British Columbia, as expected, had its share of collectors, who followed in the wake of Taylor and his contemporaries. Of particular note isJ.W. Cockle ofKaslo. He owned and operated the local hotel on Kootenay Lake at the turn of the century, and acted as a guide for any who wanted to pack into the interior mountain country. His amazing knowledge of the area and its natural history and his skill in camping and outdoor survival made him the natural choice for anyone interested in reaching remote areas for the collecting of insects. He amassed a collection of insects, including many moths, butterflies, and beetles, of the Kootenay region, the records of which are still measured with the best of today. One collector stands apart - R.V. Harvey, from Londonderry. He arrived in Vancouver in 1900 to open a private boys' school, appropriately called 'Queen's School.' This was later transplanted to Victoria and named the 'University School.' Harvey worked unceasingly in the interests of entomology, first as a most energetic collector of Lepidoptera, and then, from 1904 of the Diptera, the flies of British Columbia. The family Syrphidae was his particular strong point. It is probably due to his untiring efforts to promote, build, and unify the science of entomology that the Entomological Society of British Columbia was founded in 1902. The decline and stagnation of the society, though temporary, was due to the lack of Harvey's leadership after 1907. Pressure of other duties forced him to relinquish the leadership in 1908, although his interest in entomology remained undimmed. His death in battle in April 191 s deprived entomology of a masterful worker. ' 9 Others in British Columbia were also notable for their collecting. One, initially an insurance broker and later the postmaster in Victoria, was Ernest H . Blackmore. He appeared on the entomological scene in Canada in 1904. Until his death in 1929 he was an avid butterfly and moth collector, favouring the capturing of geometrid moths. Blackmore was the recognized authority for the identification of species of this family of insects. His personal collection of some 1500 species, consisting of more than s&;o specimens, captured in almost every part of British Columbia, remains a 'monument to his painstaking care and attention to minute details." 0

51 Collectors and naturalists George 0. Day, a retired British banker from Cheshire, settled in Duncan, British Columbia, in 1905. He was 51 years old, a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, and had had a life-long interest in insects and plants. He gave the Entomological Society of British Columbia his whole-hearted support - his house was the site of the seventh annual meeting. He was elected to the positions of vice president and president of the society during the years 1912-1 5. He had brought with him to Canada a collection of English moths and butterflies representing nearly all of the species occurring in Britain. He continued to collect in British Columbia, capturing a remarkable number of Lepidoptera, particularly on Vancouver Island. To George Day must go the credit of originating, probably in the 1910s, a unique method of setting the wings of butterflies, so that they would remain expanded and undamaged. He kept the wings of his captured specimens in place on the setting board 'by means of slips of glass hinged to the edges of the board, the weight of the glass in most cases being sufficient to hold the wings in place until dry."' Eleven articles, published in the Proceedings of the Emomological Society of British Columbia, bear witness to the expert knowledge of butterflies possessed by this 'best type' of amateur entomologist. Out of the hard-fought-for enterprise of an embryo ranch in the interior of British Columbia, located north of Kamloops, emerged another individual who had strong entomological leanings. He was Theodore A. Moilliett, 'Tam' to all his friends. An Englishman born in Herefordshire and educated in Essex, he preferred farming in Canada to the Boer War, arriving in Orillia, Ontario, in 1899. His employment trail led him through the grain fields of Saskatchewan to a smelter at Trail, British Columbia, to mercury poisoning, and finally to an enforced out-of-doors life on ranches along the North Thompson River. His ranch near Vavenby - it should have been 'Havenby,' but the recorder in the Land Titles Office could not decipher Moilliett's writing - was the first to import sheep from Lacombe and pasture them on the high ranges. Stock on the Moilliett ranch were among the first fatalities recorded as a result of tick paralysis. Moilliett found the first rabbit dying of tularaemia and picked off the rabbit tick, Haemaphysalis leporispa/ustris, from which the disease-producing organism was isolated. Moilliett was an incessant collector of moths and butterflies which he sent to E.H. Blackmore for identification and naming. There were a few 'firsts' in this collection, 'two new species known to science Enypia moillieti Blackmore and Epinotia scorsa Blackmore.' 22 His love of natural history and his extensive knowledge of the biology of the North Thompson River area may have been quite a normal trait for him, for he was a relative of Charles Darwin. J.R.J. Llewellyn-Jones of Cobble Hill, Vancouver Island, was 36 years old when he came to Canada in 1930 from Exeter. He had an MA in theology, independent

52 Early encounters

means, and could indulge in studying the macro-Lepidoptera. As president of the Entomological Society of British Columbia, 1943-7, he promised 'and strove to accomplish three objects (1) the increase of entomological literature in the Province, (2) the establishment of scholarships in aid of deserving students in Entomology, and (3) a reserve fund for publishing our Proceedings.' He accomplished the first two items by willing his library to the University of British Columbia and by personally paying for student scholarships for seven years. Llewellyn-Jones was one of the first 'amateurs' who proceeded further than merely collecting insects as a hobby. He used scientifically planned, experimental procedures to determine what food plants were used to sustain the various species of Lepidoptera. His nine papers on the subject attest to the success he achieved. 23 In Alberta, another English banker, F.C. Whitehouse, made his appearance after arriving from Warwick in 1905. He managed a bank in Red Deer, where an interest in dragonflies Jed to an energetic career of collecting these aerobatically active insects and describing new species. By 1918 he had described most of the Odonata of Alberta and published a descriptive key of the order. Although he retired from banking in 1934, his interest and activities in the study of the damsel- and the dragonflies continued unabated. His efforts culminated in the publication of comprehensive lists, catalogues, and keys of the Odonata, not only of British Columbia and Alberta, but also of all of Canada and Jamaica. His personal collection was divided among the Provincial Museum in Victoria, the City Museum of Vancouver, and the University of British Columbia. The university collection contains 6 specimens of each of 61 species of dragonflies and 18 species of damselflies, representing 79 of the 89 species found in British Columbia. Another talented and expert Alberta amateur, F.S. Carr, turned his energies to a study of beetles. Born in Cobourg, Ontario, in 1881, his entomological interests started when still a boy, but began to bear fruit when he came out west to teach in a high school in Edmonton, in 1909. Under the auspices of the Red Deer Natural History Society he publshed extensive lists of beetles: first, of the 500 species collected in northern Alberta, and ultimately, by 1933, of more than 1400 species in the province. His specialties among the beetles were the Staphylinidae and the Curculionidae (dung and snout beetles). The University of Alberta, to whom his personal collection was donated by Mrs Carr in 1939, became richer by some 100,000 specimens, representing most of the North American beetles. Rivalling Wolley-Dod as an ardent collector and taxonomic expert of the butterflies and moths of Alberta was Kenneth Bowman. Arriving in Alberta in 1904, from England, he already had an extensive knowledge of the macro-Lepidoptera. By 1919 he was able to publish a record of 500 species which occurred in Alberta and which

53 Collectors and naturalists he had collected. No one, up to that time, had paid attention to the microLepidoptera - the tiny moths - some of which are exceedingly minute. Bowman attacked this group with sincere taxonomic zeal and in 1951 published a revised list of more than 1800 species. His collection of moths, now at the University of Alberta, still contains many tens of specimens that are unnamed, a lasting tribute to the energetic work and interest taken by the amateur in the natural history of one small portion of the entomological fauna of Alberta. Another naturalist was George A. Hardy. He had had some schooling and training in biology while a youth in Glasgow, so that it was natural for him to make extensive collections of plants, birds, mammals, and insects while homesteading in Alberta . Later, as a member of the staff of the Provincial Museum in Vancouver, from 1924 to 1928 and 1941 to 1953, he had ample opportunity to travel and collect insects; 'his lanky frame clad in short pants and armed with a butterfly net and a vasculum startled the natives in many out-of-the-way places." 4 He, as did so many others both amateur and professional, concentrated his efforts on a single group of insects. This specialty was the wood-boring beetle group, on which he is still regarded as an authority. The early twentieth century brought forth some very enthusiastic students of entomology in Manitoba. Most were contemporaries of Norman Criddle, the pioneer professional entomologist of the province, whom we shall see again in parts II and IV. Among these was J.B. Wallis, born in England in 1877, who emigrated to Canada in 1893 and served as school teacher and superintendent of schools in Winnipeg from 1903 to 1945. He was particularly knowledgeable about beetles, dragonflies, and butterflies. Of all the beetles, he liked the tiger and water beetles best. He published monographic studies on these insects. 'JB' was an enthusiastic collector, a renowned specialist, and an expert entomologist who was invited to participate in the Northern Insect Survey sponsored by the federal Department of Agriculture from 1949 to 1952. 2 ' L.H.D. Roberts, a Canadian National Railway official in Winnipeg, was also an ardent collector of beetles and butterflies. Arriving from England as a boy in 1913, he had always had an interest in insects and devoted all his spare time to this hobby. When pressure of work forced him to give up his collecting he gave all of his previous captures of beetles to J.B. Wallis, and his Lepidoptera to the Winnipeg Museum. One of the most enthusiastic collectors of insects to accompany Norman Criddle and J.B. Wallis on their many collecting 'safaris' was G. Shirley Brooks. He also was an Englishman, a Canadian National Railway employee, and a collector of everything entomological. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s he was capturing, pinning,

54 Early encounters and mounting all the insects that he caught in and around Winnipeg and Victoria Beach. His premier interest was in the butterflies, a collection of which is now in the Manitoba Museum. Then there were collectors who used their time and talents in entomology for purposes other than those usually regarded as altruistic or scientific. J.F. May turned his collecting hobby into a very successful commercial venture . He was a forest ranger in the Riding Mountain National Park of Manitoba in the 1930s, where his affinity for natural history enabled him to explore some of the most interesting insect collecting grounds in the province. May and his wife collected as many butterflies and other 'showy' insects as they could find, and bought and traded many more for exotic species from different parts of the world. They exhibited these and the native species at various fairs. May left government service and began a travelling entomological show and exhibition in the United States which proved so successful that he established a permanent home for his collection at Colorado Springs, Colorado. 'May's Tropical Exhibition' is still operated by his son, J.M. May, in Colorado. Thus, the collection started in 1903 had blossomed into a gargantuan exposition - a unique chapter of entomological endeavour which had its origin in southern Manitoba. Others collected for the sheer beauty of the specimens they captured, while the museums were enriched by the bequests of the prize specimens. Donald Mackie was a registrar of births, marriages, and deaths in the province of Manitoba, and collected butterflies. When he could no longer enjoy the beauty of his captures, because of failing eyesight, he donated, in the late 1940s, his fine collection to the University of Manitoba. There were also those collectors of whom no one was aware, who enjoyed their hobby of collecting insects but did not share their experiences with other amateurs or professionals. One such instance can be cited here - Hugh A. Gibbon of Mineota, Manitoba. Prior to 1963 no one, either amateur or professional, had been aware of his large insect collection. Gibbon's heirs donated a huge 'collection of moths and butterflies ... perhaps 15,000 specimens of possibly 2,500 species" 6 to the Department of Entomology, University of Manitoba. Only then did others become aware of Gibbon's entomological expertise. He had gathered thousands of Lepidoptera from correspondents in many countries, and had purchased a large number from supply houses for prices ranging from 50 cents to $15. All his spare time had been given over to his hobby - his family scarcely saw or learned to know him as a father, for he had locked himself away in a small room to carry on with his 'bugs.' The ultimate value of the Gibbon collection may only be known after an examination and evaluation of the collection by the present university entomologists, A. Grant Robinson, and his staff.

55 Collectors and naturalists Just how many individual amateur entomologists there were in western Canada remains uncertain. It can be assumed that many members of the Entomological Society of Canada Oater, of Ontario) had collections or were keen observers of insect life. Only detailed research will produce a comprehensive history of all the amateurs who had a part in the development of entomology in western Canada.

PART II: THE FIRST PROFESSIONALS

James Fletcher, Dominion Entomologist 1884-1908

C. Gordon Hewitt, Dominion Entomologist 1909-20

Arthur Gibson, Dominion Entomologist 1920-42

E.H . Strickland

William Saunders

R.C. Treherne

The first laboratory at Aweme, Manitoba, with Norman Criddle at right (1915)

The Dominion Entomological Laboratory at Leth bridge in

1920

4

James Fletcher, Dominion Entomologist

With a stroke of the pen, J.H. Pope, the Minister of Agriculture, created the position of Dominion Entomologist and launched Canada into the era of professional entomology. The man appointed to the position, on I June 1884, was James Fletcher. Fletcher was not a professional biologist as we know it today. He was an accountant by vocation, working in the Library of Parliament, but he was also, by avocation, a brilliant naturalist. He was insatiably interested in nature and all that she denotes. By rigorous self-improvement, observation, and discussion, he had become a proficient entomologist, an expert taxonomist, and a recognized specialist on moths and butterflies. But always he was intent on improving the lot of man by controlling the insects that were harmful to him and his country's well being. His unlimited energy and dynamic personality set him apart from his fellow biologists, and made him an admirable choice for the position of 'Dominion Entomologist.' The position was strictly honorary. Pope selected Fletcher upon the recommendation of a number of prominent leaders in agricultural science from across the Dominion, not the least of these being the first director of the Experimental Farm System, William Saunders. In particular, Pope took the advice of members of the Select Committee on Agriculture, which met in Ottawa during the parliamentary session of 1884. It had recommended that the appointment should be purely an honorary one. The appointment was to be the great Canadian experiment to test the value of insect investigations to be begun by the incumbent. The value to the farming population was to be assessed before changes in designation of title, or responsibilities, were to be made. As he himself admitted: 'I have found by experience that farmers, agriculturalists and orchardists throughout the country ... upon learning this fact [of mine being an honorary position) have gone to considerable trouble to

60

The first professionals

assist me in my studies, which might not have been the case, to such a large extent, had this been a remunerative political appointment." Once appointed, Fletcher started a network of correspondents that became his lifeline of entomological intelligence reports. By the end of December 1884, a scant six months after appointment, he had on his correspondence list 'upwards of 400 observers, who have promised to take notes under my instructions, and report periodically upon noxious insects and remedies suggested to keep them in check. All of these gentlemen have given a certain amount of attention to the matter, and most of them are practical farmers and gardeners, engaged in the cultivation of their own land." Correspondents sprang up all over Canada, and reports of insects, their outbreaks, damage, and incurred losses soon poured into Fletcher's office. He was firmly embarked upon the well-known course of 'economic entomology.' He still had very much in common with the itinerant collectors, the resident collectors, the hobbyists, and the naturalists; and he encouraged them all. But he was just as aware of the practical use that could be made of entomological information, and constantly urged all to reduce their crop losses by rigorous control procedures. Fletcher's appointment was made known through the press, and inquiries regarding insects came swiftly from western Canada. Acton Burrows, the Deputy Minister of Agriculture for Manitoba, sent some samples of injurious cutworms to him in July 1884. Fletcher's reply regarding their identification and control was published by the Manitoba government as one of its crop bulletins, thereby getting practical information back, immediately, to the farmer who had need of it. 3 Previous to Fletcher's appointment there had been no one in authority, or in any official position, to whom the provincial officials could turn for advice on entomological matters. For this reason very little extension work on insect control was practiced, and farmers were left to make their own way and to live with crop pests the best way they knew how. Western settlements, except for those along the Assiniboine River in Manitoba, and in the Red River Valley, were in their infancy. The two principal settlements, in what are known as Saskatchewan and Alberta today, were in the Prince Albert and Edmonton districts. The statistics 4 for 1882 and 1883 presented in Table I indicate the relative size and activity at these two places. Manitoba and the territorial authorities had their hands full with immigration, settlement, and livestock quarantines. Both men and animals were afflicted with external parasites, especially lice. Mange in horses and cattle, and itch in man, could be cured if the advice of veterinarians and medical doctors were followed. However, it did pose an entomological problem and both psoroptic and sarcoptic mites received publicity from provincial sources.5

61 James Fletcher, Dominion Entomologist TABLE

I

Prince Albert and Edmoncon districts: Statistics for I 882 and I 883 Prince Albert

Population of district Number of farmers Acres ploughed in I 882 Acres ploughed in 1883 Area increase from that of I 882 (%) Acres seeded to wheat in I 88 3 Acres seeded to barley Acres seeded to oats Acres seeded to potatoes Average yield per acre of wheat (bu) Average yield per acre of barley (bu) Average yield per acre of oats (bu) Average yield per acre of potatoes (bu) Threshing machines in district Number of horses Number of cattle Number of sheep Number of pigs Immigrancs in 188 3 Insect pests and/or damage

7168 1375 1732 5880 IO

5330 1745 1020 300 20 35 55 250 23 9251 37,529 46 2104 IOOO

none

Edmonton 1812 306 677

4922 40 2032 2602 316 65 18 21 27 I 18 6

1136 2005 2087 59 150 none

Grasshoppers had not plagued western Canada since 1876 and they could no longer be considered a cause for the lack of immigration. In 1880 Manitoba was virtually free of worms, insects, and blight, except for a few occurrences of the Colorado potato beetle, which had begun to spread northward and eastward from the United States. Another family of insects began to show up, namely the root maggots. Turnips, radishes, and other root crops were no longer free of pests for the Hylemyia species of root maggots had found a fresh supply of food. Since then these insects have become a serious menace to root crops in the western Canadian provinces, often forcing market gardeners out of production. However, in the early 1880s, these insects made their presence known, but no one was greatly alarmed. Other insects, such as cabbage maggots and caterpillars of the cabbage butterfly, were also making an appearance, but the wireworm, for the most part, was quite unknown in Manitoba.6 Insects appeared to be rather unobtrusive and did not cause the farming public, or urban dwellers, any undue concern. To verify this somewhat 'quiet' situation may have been, in part, the cause of the correspondence crusade. However, it was the best means of quickly assessing the situation. By 1885 Fletcher was able to travel into the western regions about which he had heard so much and which, in their vastness, appeared to represent the supreme

62 The first professionals

challenge to his entomological endeavours. The western visit enabled him to meet his many western correspondents, to assess the local agricultural situations, and to go collecting insects. 7 In British Columbia he met Rev. G.W. Taylor, who was still enjoying the free-lance activities of a naturalist. Fletcher learned much from him about insects of the province and especially of Vancouver Island. Taylor would henceforth keep him informed of all activity of insects in British Columbia. It is probably due to this man that James Fletcher retained his grasp of entomological matters on the west coast. A second principal contact man in the West was Hugh McKellar. Although not strictly an entomologist, McKeilar's career followed the route of school teacher, principal, farmer and homesteader, civil servant, Chief Clerk of the Manitoba Department of Agriculture, and finally newspaper editor. During his farming days at Clearwater, Manitoba, from 1880 to 1890 James Fletcher made his acquaintance. From that time on, and especially during his civil service career, which ended in 1904, McKellar was the 'chief source of information on insect problems in Manitoba.' 8 For the most part, insect problems were minimal; in 1885 he could report: 'Manitoba and the North West Territories have been remarkably free from insect depredations, but from certain parts of the territories have come rumours of the return of the "Hateful Locust". None of the specimens forwarded to me, however, for identification proved to be this species.' 9 Although only indigenous species of grasshoppers were found on the prairies and caused little harm, a few cutworms were of economic importance in Victoria. In other parts of the West, root maggots on radishes, turnips, and cabbage caused some concern in most settlements except where they had been suppressed by the irrigation of garden crops, such as occurred in the interior of British Columbia. With correspondents such as Taylor and McKellar to keep him posted on insect conditions in western Canada, Fletcher was making the most of the reliable information he obtained. The settlement of the West spurred the federal and provincial governments to investigate possible assistance in agrarian research. William Saunders had travelled extensively throughout the United States and Europe, at the request of the Canadian government, to determine what these countries did for their people in terms of government-sponsored experimental agriculture. His detailed report, and the subsequent committee work, resulted in an Act Respecting Experimental Farm Stations, passed in 1886 with hardly a word of opposition. In Saunders' report on the proposed Experimental Farm System was a list of positions including that of an entomologist whose duty it should be to investigate the habits of insects destructive to farm and garden crops, fruit, etc., as well as those affecting animals, with the view of testing such

63 James Fletcher, Dominion Entomologist remedies as may be available for their destruction. He should also prepare such collections for the museum at the central station as would illustrate the insects injurious and beneficial to vegetation, and duplicate collections of a similar character as early as practicable for each of the sub-stations. Deficiencies in crops arise from the depradations of insects. The yearly loss in Canada from this cause is very large, almost every farmer suffering from it to some extent. Such losses cannot be entirely prevented, but might be greatly lessened by the diffusion of more general information on the subject. Were a skilled entomologist appointed, whose duty it would be to visit districts where insect plagues occur, and give all the information obtainable as to the best preventive and remedial measures to adopt, the annual losses might be greatly reduced. ' 0

The inclusion of an entomologist pos111on on the roster of scientific personnel signified that the fledgling science had been officially recognized. The Experimental Farm Act gave Canada a legal mandate to conduct agricultural research. On I July 1887, acting on the advice of William Saunders, the first Director of the Experimental Farms System, Sir John Carling, Minister of Agriculture, appointed James Fletcher as 'Dominion Entomologist and Botanist.' He was to retain this dual portfolio until his death in 1908. He had successfully completed his period of apprenticeship; the 'honorary' designation was removed. Entomology was officially recognized as an important and vital branch of biology, one that deserved recognition. The 1887 appointment of Rev. G.W. Taylor as Provincial Entomologist of British Columbia would permit farmers to get information at first hand from their provincial entomologist, rather than await word from a distant Ottawa specialist. It became common policy that federal and provincial entomologists would work together for the betterment of agriculture, and for the welfare of Canadians. The province would assume responsibility for the control of outbreaks of insects within its borders, conduct control campaigns and extension courses, supply the chemical if such were necessary for control, and assist in practical experimental work. The federal entomological service would be responsible for the biological study of insects, the determination of the life histories of insects, experimentation on a variety of chemical, cultural, and biological agents useful in the control of insects, and the formulation of general recommendations for the control of insect pests. Dissemination of information, by means of lectures, discussions, pamphlets, bulletins, demonstrations, and correspondence, was to be a vital part of the whole operation. Federal and provincial entomologists were to serve a basic industry, the food producer. Many of the details of entomological investigations for western Canada are to be found in the 22 annual reports Fletcher wrote while with the Dominion Experimental Farms system. These reports deal with the habits and control of prevalent insect

64 The first professionals pests and are of more value and interest to the student of entomology than to the historian of entomology. However, relevant portions of that period, 1887 to 1908, interweave inexorably into the historical fabric of people, places, and insects. The Fletcher era may be designated a one-man era in entomology. From the time he was appointed until 1892 he ran a one-man operation. After eight years in office it was recognized that the dual portfolio of managing the nation's insects and plants was too much for one person, andJ.A. Guignard was appointed Assistant Entomologist and Botanist. Fletcher delegated to him much of the botanical work, especially that of the herbarium duties, seed collection and planting, at the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa. In the meantime opportunistic insects came to the fore to present a challenge to man. In 1888 cutworms caused damage to crops in all provinces, but nowhere were the outbreaks general and widespread in any one locality. Taylor reported grasshoppers in British Columbia, presumably on the Saanich Peninsula where injury to crops was extensive. 11 The late 1880s are remembered as the 'Years of the Caterpillar.' The diamondback moth was a serious pest of cabbages, from the Pacific to Winnipeg, in 1890. Some were noticed in Victoria and in Winnipeg as early as 1885, in Captain Deane's garden in Regina in 1887, and in Brandon in 1889 where they were collected by S.A. Bedford at the Experimental Farm. 12 Cutworms were common, as noted earlier. Then came the oak-looper, Lambdina somniaria. These insects had occurred in cycles every three or four years on Vancouver Island and had disfigured the oak trees by defoliation. In 1887, populations of the larvae reached epidemic proportions. Taylor described it well when he said the caterpillars 'were most disagreeable pests, dropping from their food plant [oak trees) and hanging by threads, so that even in walking through the trees it was almost impossible to keep them out of ones eyes and mouth. The threads and larvae were so numerous that it was most unpleasant to walk through the oak groves, and the sound of the falling excrement was suggestive of gentle rain." 3 Unpleasant and disfiguring as their presence had become, they had to be endured because control, by man, was unavailable. However, by 1891 nature stepped in and decimated the oak looper with a fungus disease and the proud oaks of Victoria could once more enhance the city. In Winnipeg a new attack of some interest by the autumn canker-worm caused a few serious moments when ash-leaved maples were defoliated in 1891. But more serious was the effect of damaged cereal crops by the red-backed cutworm, Euxoa ochrogaster. It made its presence felt in grain fields from Ottawa to Calgary. Another insect of note, which Fletcher kept under surveillance through his many correspondents in western Canada, was the red turnip beetle. This leaf-feeding beetle first cropped up in the collections of A.R. Selwyn, who, when with the

65 James Fletcher, Dominion Entomologist Geological Survey of Canada, found them in the Chilcotin district and Peace River country of British Columbia in 1875. Fletcher collected these beetles in August 1885 on the farm of the Cowdry brothers of Pense, near Regina. At that time these beetles were so numerous as to make him wonder whether they were a native pest (of which there appears to be no doubt) and if they, at any time, might become troublesome. By 1891 he was convinced that the red turnip beetle was a serious pest of cruciferous plants. He received letters of complaints from a long list of gardeners whose radishes, turnips, and cabbages had been severely attacked. Among the many complainants were G.D. Fitzgerald, of Grenfell, North-West Territories, Thomas Copland and J .A. Smith, of Saskatoon, Isaac Jones, of Pheasant Forks, North-West Territories, S.A. Bedford, of Brandon, Manitoba, Rev. F.R. Hole, of Halse, Minnedosa, Manitoba, and William H. Weston, of Lorlie, Manitoba. 14 The attacks of the red turnip beetle continued for several more years, until in 1893 Fletcher finally conceded that the pests were indigenous to the prairies. He reached this conclusion because someone had found its native food plant. Thomas Copland of Saskatoon, an ardent gardener and careful observer, was the first to find the eggs of the insect. He later discovered that it fed, in nature, on the smallflowered, prairie wallflower. Today, the red turnip beetle, Entomoscelis americana, is still one of the principal pests in western Canada, and especially of rapeseed, the 'Cinderella' crop of the prairies. Many other insects in the West absorbed Fletcher's attention during the 1890s. Cutworms, in particular, were a constant menace and, in addition to the red-backed cutworm, farmers began to lose cereal crops to other species. In 1893, John Stewart of Regina lost twenty acres of wheat to Agrotis campestris; William Richardson of Douglas, Manitoba, lost thirty acres of wheat to the same species of insect. 15 No satisfactory control for cutworms was known at that time. The red-back cutworm and its related ally, the pale western cutworm, were to become one of the most economically important and ostentatious enigmas to crop production that the West has ever known. Their ravages became colossal following the settlement of the area: the planted domestic crops were used selectively as food by the worms who had become adapted to them after subsisting on native vegetation from prehistoric times. The excessive crop losses and the appeals for help from the farmers were the major reasons for the establishment of a federal entomological research laboratory in southern Alberta in 1913. By I 893 the Colorado potato beetle had become established north of the 49th parallel. Although the damage to potatoes was never very severe or widespread, the presence of the 'potato bugs,' even in small numbers, was always viewed with alarm. The slow invasion of Manitoba by the beetles, from 1890, became progressively more advanced, so that in August of most years in the mid-189os the potato plants literally disappeared from view. Again, control was limited, usually confined to hand

66 The first professionals picking of the larvae and/or spraying with Paris green, the arsenical insecticide of the day. Most of the settlers produced large families and it was not uncommon to see all the children out in the potato patch, each armed with a pail. Kerosene, or light oil, or water in the bottom of the pail, served to entrap the bugs as they were knocked off the plants and into the container. Many potato crops were saved by this method of control. Of course, each farm had its flock of chickens. The fowl were encouraged to stroll through the farmyard and garden, including the potato patch, so that they might help themselves to any and all unwelcome insect pests. One conspicuous insect, which always prompted the writing of letters to Fletcher, was the large, metallic, blue-green, blister beetle, Lycca nucalli. When present on one of their native host plants, the vetches, they would literally cover the plant, causing the leaves and branches to droop from the sheer weight of numbers. These insects, in most settlements in the southern prairies, had assumed the role of a pest insect by 1890. Broad beans, horse beans, and most of the garden beans were usually attacked. Reports reaching Fletcher in 1892 indicated that they were unusually numerous, extending north as far as Saskatoon, as reported by Thomas Copland and G.L. Smith, and Winslow, Alberta, as reported by Christopher Halliday. The insects continued to appear in large numbers the following year, causing considerable damage to gardens in the Qu' Appelle valley, east to Brandon. 16 Such incidents and for the most part these would be minor outbreaks - were to continue for many years thereafter. On 5 July 1895, Fletcher made a discovery, monumental in its impact on western agriculture. While on a trip through the prairies, he stopped off at Indian Head, in the North-West Territories, to do some insect collecting. In so doing he captured the adults of the wheat stem sawfly, Cephus cinccus, an apparently routine addition to the ever-lengthening list of species found in western Canada. On 6 August 1896, one year, one month, and one day after the initial capture, Fletcher received a package from Jack Wenman of Souris, Manitoba. In it were wheat stems containing the nearly full-grown larvae of the same insect species. Now Fletcher was certain that a new insect pest was threatening the production of wheat in the 'bread basket' of Canada. The following year, 1897, Fletcher offered confirmation: 'perfect flies of Cephus pygmaeus [as it was called then) were reared from straws sent from Souris, Man., by Mr. Wenman, thus proving without doubt the identity of the species which injured Mr. Wenman's wheat last year. During the past summer some harm was done by the same insect near Indian Head, N.W.T." 7 The wheat stem sawfly was to become the number one pest on the prairies. It was one fundamental reason why the federal government expanded its entomological service by hiring staff and establishing regional laboratories in the prairie provinces.

67 James Fletcher, Dominion Entomologist Fletcher was already assured of the pest status of at least 15 species of cutworm that could, did, and would continue to damage garden and field crops. Now he had just been made aware of the fact that the wheat stem sawfly was a colossal threat to wheat production. In 1898, grasshoppers, the ageless plague, once more loomed threateningly on the horizon. In the autumn of 1897 female grasshoppers that had alighted with a swarm were seen laying eggs on the farm of John Scott of Deloraine, Manitoba. From these eggs a sufficient number of grasshoppers had hatched in the spring of 1898 to inflict damage to some cereal crops. Other farmers living along the base of the Turtle Mountains also noticed the presence of increasing numbers of grasshoppers. Following the instructions of Sydney Fisher, Minister of Agriculture, and at the invitation of Premier Greenway of Manitoba, accompanied by Hugh McKellar, Chief Clerk of the Manitoba Department of Agriculture, Fletcher made a survey of the area and visited all known grasshopper-infested localities. 18 This was probably the first official grasshopper abundance survey conducted in western Canada, a type of survey, now modified, still conducted each year on the prairies. The results of that survey showed that only a small strip of territory, lying north of the Turtle Mountains, was infested. Of greater significance was the fact that the species was identified as the Rocky Mountain locust. None but the old timers could remember ever seeing this 'hateful locust' in injurious numbers before, because the last great outbreak had occurred twenty-three years earlier, in 1875. However, John Scott, the farmer, recognized it, and promptly spread rows of dry straw across the infested land. After the young nymphs had congregated there for the night the straw was lighted and the insects destroyed. Other farmers were not so diligent, knowledgeable, or alert, and considerable damage was done to some crops. Parasites were found among the grasshoppers and hopes were high that they would kill their hosts and the plague would soon be over. The following year, I 899, Fletcher again inspected the area from Boissevain to Deloraine and south, together with Hugh McKellar and Professor Otto Lugger, State Entomologist, from the University of Minnesota. They again confirmed the presence of the Rocky Mountain locust, Melanoplus spretus, as well as the lesser migratory grasshopper, Melanoplus sanguinipes, formerly called aclanis. Although most of the farmers followed the recommended cultural control practices, a few did not and their crops were affected. However, the damage was minimal. This second year of increased grasshopper activity is notable because it afforded Canadian farmers the opportunity to use the hopper-dozer. This was a contrivance, shaped much like the scoop of a modern-day front-end loader, but which was dragged across the ground with horses. Grasshoppers that jumped up before it landed in the 'bucket,' the bottom of which was covered with kerosene, coal-t:ir, or

68 The first professionals water. These 'machines' had been used to good advantage in the 1870s in the midwestern United States and as many as 18 different models and types were described by C.V. Riley, the United States Entomologist.' 9 The farmers that used the hopper-dozers caught many bushels of grasshoppers from the margins of their grain fields. Many, however, were not caught and took to flight. A.S. Barton of Boissevain 'saw them leaving by flight one fine afternoon, coming from the north-west and flying south-east." 0 It was necessary to determine if this species really had 'permanent breeding grounds.' If this 'permanent' ground included the area north of and surrounding the Turtle Mountains, then the increased populations in 1898-99 could be the initial sign of a population explosion oflocusts that could readily devastate the country as it had in former years. Fletcher and Lugger had confirmed, in June, that the species was sprecus. Professor Hunter, a special agent of the United States Department of Agriculture, was dispatched in late July to 'examine and report.' He made his 'survey' and concluded that the region of Manitoba was not a permanent breeding ground of sprecus because there were too much vegetation, too many trees, and too little favourable breeding ground. 21 In addition to this, many flew away and damage was minimal, so that the threat of the return of the 'imperious hateful locust' was unfounded. There were other species present that would have to be watched, because in them and in their capabilities for destruction lay the real hazard to crop production. In retrospect, Hunter's conclusion was prophetic. Melanoplus sprecus was never again to attain the immense population numbers, the innumerable swarms, that once darkened the skies and covered the plains of western Canada. Their days were numbered as fewer and fewer were in evidence, and more and more were hustled off to oblivion. The last known specimens were collected in south-western Manitoba by Norman Criddle in 1902. 'Although locusts or grasshoppers appeared in the Turtle Mountain district during the seasons of 1898 and 1899, no alarming injury was done by them. This season, (1900) ... they appeared in dangerous numbers in the districts skirting the Assiniboine and Souris Rivers.' 22 At the urgent request of the Manitoba Minister of Agriculture, Fletcher was once more invited to come from Ottawa to assess the grasshopper situation. He toured the affected districts, saw the many infested fields, and was fully prepared to find large swarms of the Rocky Mountain locust. However, he found that only three native species were causing almost all the trouble. In only one place did he find the 'hateful locust,' at Douglas, Manitoba. ' 3 Near Douglas and the hamlet of Aweme, Hugh McKellar introduced Fletcher to Norman Criddle. The Criddles were the pioneers of the district, having arrived from England in 1882. Percy Criddle, the 'Governor', and his four sons, Norman, Evelyn, Stuart, and Talbot, were all inclined toward natural history, as well as being

69 James Fletcher, Dominion Entomologist liberally self-educated and proficient in the arts and music. Their biographies have been superbly presented by Talbot's daughter, Alma.24 When Fletcher and Norman Criddle met, the latter was a young man of 25. His natural talents as an artist - particularly his painting of botanical subjects - and his devoted attention to, observations of, and respect for all of nature's creations made him one of the best informed and most respected 'naturalists' of Canada. Having collected insects with L.E. Marmont, H .W . Boger, A.W . Hanham, and later with J.B. Wallis, he was well acquainted with classical entomology. Now his efforts were to be channelled more and more into practical, or economic entomology, for his chance association with Fletcher was to last a lifetime. Spurred by the grasshopper invasion of 1898 Criddle and a neighbour, Harry Vane, to whom he gives the credit of invention, 'invented a machine somewhat similar to the hopper-dozer, only longer. It is made of sheet iron and burns wood.' Percy Criddle described it thus in his diary : Boys making a great pan ten feet by two and a half feet, which is to contain burning wood and be drawn by two horses. They expect it will be an immense success with the hoppers, and it will certainly be a novelty. It has no wheels so will glide right on the top of the ground, having a low sleigh-like lip in front and back about one foot high - also sides seven or eight inches high, the whole being made of sheet iron, bars, etc. etc.25

The 'burner' was as great a success as the 'hopper-dozer' - many farmers were using the latter in 'all parts of the country.' The Manitoba Department of Agriculture assisted farmers in the control of grasshoppers by 'supplying them with hopper dozers and coal oil necessary in using the same.' The best method of control was to poison the grasshoppers with a bait mixture of bran dampened by arsenic-treated water. Norman Criddle stated that the Paris green and bran mixture was 'far superior to anything else we tried. It was first used here with success by Mr. Harry Vane of this place [Aweme).' The phenomenal success of the poisoned bait led to it being hailed as one of the great aids to mankind in the twentieth century. Now the farmer need not fear the locust, for he had a preparation at hand that offered excellent control of the pest and reliable protection of his crops. The following spring of 1901, Hugh McKellar wrote Fletcher, on 15 April, saying, 'I have received a report from the Stockton and Treesbank districts that young grasshoppers are hatching out in millions." 6 Norman Criddle expected them to be as bad as in the previous year, so the Department of Agriculture in Winnipeg sent out Paris green to areas where baiting was necessary. By 17 June 1901, 1000 pounds of the arsenical had been sent out. 27 Fifty pounds were sent to the Criddle homestead for immediate use against the hoppers and also for experimental purposes.

70 The first professionals

Whenever the provincial government sent out Paris green for grasshopper control, it always included a recipe for the preparation of the poisoned bait. This recipe had been arrived at by Norman Criddle and Harry Vane by meticulous experimentation. It consisted of One part Paris green, one part salt (the locusts will not eat it without), and eleven parts of bran. Mix into a mash, adding as much water as the stuff will hold. Spread in as small lumps as possible. We generally use a trowel or thin piece of iron. Get a little of the mixture on the edge and then fling so that it will spread some 15 yards. A pound of Paris green should make enough mixture to spread a strip two miles long by 15 yards wide. Fresh stuff should be spread every two days. 28

Ever mindful of costs, they continued to experiment. In his diary Norman Criddle wrote: 'I, in company with Harry Vane, discovered a simple remedy for killing locusts.' It was the modified version of arsenic-poisoned bran. It was described as: The poison mixture as now used by us consists of I part of Paris green, 2 of salt, and 35 to 40 of horse dung (by measure). Mix thoroughly, adding enough water to make soft, without being sloppy. Scatter well, in quantity according to the number of locusts. They will be attracted for at least 40 feet by the smell. The horse dung is preferable when fresh, but will do several weeks old, even after being washed considerably by rain. 29

The 'Criddle Mixture,' as the horse manure-poisoned bait mixture was called, was hailed as another great discovery of the century. Fletcher was so impressed by its effectiveness, simplicity, and the availability of ingredients that he suggested it be an 'official' government recommendation, even to farmers in Ontario and British Columbia. He stated: Mr. Criddle's investigations and experiments are of great interest and his discovery that horse droppings may with advantage be substituted for bran is of great practical value. This material is always available on a farm, while bran, which was formerly used as the best vehicle for distributing the poison, costs money and is neither so suitable for holding the poison nor so attractive to the locusts. Mr. Criddle was led to experiment with horse droppings from noticing that locusts flocked to this material whenever it was found lying on roadways. The mixture of horse droppings, salt and Paris green is undoubtedly the most attractive, fatal and cheap remedy for locusts which I have ever seen used. It is easily distributed with a trowel, or wooden paddle, from a barrel placed in a wagon and driven round the edge of a field. It can be readily scattered for a distance of 20 or 30 feet out into the crop, by a person standing in the wagon. 30

71 James Fletcher, Dominion Entomologist

In the spring of 1902, when grasshoppers once more hatched out in millions, especialy in areas where baiting was poorly done the previous year, McKellar hired Norman Criddle to 'assist farmers interested in the proper use of the Paris green mixture.' 3 ' Small, isolated populations of the Rocky Mountain locust were still to be found, and, strangely enough, these remained in the Douglas-Treesbank area, where Criddle could keep his eye on them. Still the innovator, and never satisfied that the highest level of efficiency with the lowest cost figure had been reached, Criddle continued his experimentation with the 'Criddle Mixture,' even though other duties with the department kept him away from home. Fletcher and McKellar were also interested in finding out if a cheaper grasshopper bait mixture could be produced, one that would be less toxic to warmblooded animals, and still be as effective as the one in use. Criddle wrote: 'With regard to the strength of Paris green mixture I had not much time to experiment personally at home ; but experiments conducted by my brother, Evelyn Criddle, show that undoubtedly 60 parts horse droppings can be used to one of Paris green (by measure), and probably 75 parts.' 32 With this type of experimentation completed, the authorities considered the 'Criddle Mixture' completely satisfactory. The Manitoba Department of Agriculture endorsed it, saying: 'As sufficient experimenting has now been done by the Department, supplying Paris green, farmers in future will have to use the remedy for destroying locusts at their own expense.' 33 In 1903 the grasshopper plague was quite diminished. Natural predators and parasites had decimated populations to low levels and relatively few farmers had to use poison baiting mixtures. Criddle and Vane also succeeded in solving another major problem. It was quite common for grasshoppers and crickets to chew the twine that kept the grain tied in bundles. This untying effect, especially when it occurred to bundles that were stooked, greatly increased the amount of work while threshing and the amount of grain lost while handling. Criddle and Vane were contemplating the use of a poison, incorporated in the twine, which would kill the insects when they chewed on it. Because so little of the twine would be eaten and ingested the poisoning method was not deemed to be useful, particularly given the potential danger of having poisoned twine lying about the farmstead. Harry Vane experimented with repellents. Using copper sulphate (bluestone), he and Norman Criddle tried soaking the balls of twine in various concentrations of the solution. They finally hit upon a recipe which they termed effective, and submitted the following to the Dominion Entomologist: 'Soak the balls of twine in a solution of 2 pounds of bluetone to 12 gallons of water for half an hour, then dry thoroughly.' 34 This was another 'first' for Criddle and his associates in their constant struggle against the locust.

72 The first professionals

By 1904 the 'saga' of the six-year locust outbreak on the prairies had come to an end. The period had been of sufficient length to test and prove the value of new control methods. It was of significance because it permitted Criddle, the unknown entomologist, to emerge and demonstrate his remarkable abilities that were to dominate much of the entomological scene in western Canada for the next thirty years. It also marked the permanent demise of Melanoplus sprecus. The last few individuals disappeared from the fields in southern Manitoba in 1902. Fletcher collaborated with provincial officials and devoted amateurs in the handling of a wide variety of insect pests, the most notable being the cutworm and the San Jose scale. At the turn of the century Fletcher estimated that there probably were one hundred different kinds of common insect pests in Canada. 35 Some would appear in injurious numbers in some region every year. He also indicated that sufficient biological information was on hand concerning 95 per cent of these pests and that immediate recommendations for their control could be made. These statistics suggest that there were serious outbreaks of insects other than the locusts. Some of these other insect pests were the cutworms. Of the fifteen or more species the red-backed cutworm, Euxoa ochrogaster, had proven its pest capabilities across the southern Canadian prairies. It remained a serious pest of cereals for many years to come. The surprise insect pest of 1900 on the Pacific coast was the variegated cutworm, Peridroma saucia . The worm and its damage, especially to garden crops, were reported not only from British Columbia but also from many parts of Manitoba and Ontario. No one had been aware of increased populations in 1899, the year previous, so that the suddenness of attack caught everyone by surprise. It was reported to the British Columbia Department of Agriculture by Tom Wilson. In one of the earliest recorded references to insects on Lulu Island in the mouth of the Fraser River near Vancouver, we are told that Wilson stated that the potato tops on Lulu Island were being devoured by some insect, but which, in spite of diligent search, could not be detected. Suspecting the cause, I [Anderson) advised looking for the culprit at night with lanterns, this was done with the expected result. Not suspecting the infestation to be widespread, I merely recommended the treatment usually followed ... The sweetened bran poisoned with Paris green ... was found to be most effectual. Unfortunately, the supply of Paris green, not only in this province but in the adjoining states and California, was not equal to the demands, in consequence of which great havoc was wrought before a supply could be received from the East ... The numbers of caterpillars were simply incredible, in places the surface of the ground was described as a moving mass, and where they were poisoned in any number the stench was unendurable. On account of their numbers and the consequent scarcity of food, they soon relinquished their natural nocturnal

73 James Fletcher, Dominion Entomologist and non-climbing habits, and myriads could be seen crossing the dusty roads in the heat of the day in search of food; fruit trees, if not protected, were ascended, and the fruit as well as the leaves, consumed. Naturally green succulent food was first consumed, but, as that got scarce, anything and everything was attacked; after consuming the tops of potatoes, turnips, onions, carrots, and such things, the tubers were attacked. Potatos which were well matured and those which were quite late, escaped with the least loss; carrots and onions suffered very severely. The potato crop was probably reduced one-third, and other root-crops in proportion. The second crop of clover was almost entirely destroyed. 36

Such an incredible outbreak of worms had never before occurred in British Columbia. In addition to the loss subtained, the mere sight of the crawling hordes severely taxed the sensibilities of the citizens. The insects were fought at every turn, with poisoned bait and water traps, and when the lawns in front of the Government Buildings in Victoria were found to be swarming with them, rollers were used to crush them by the thousands. The 'execrated old Crow came in for a word of praise when they assiduously cleaned up the same lawn in the days following. Other wild birds, such as the Blue Jay, came to the aid of the farmers, as did the domestic chickens, ducks, and at Agassiz, the pigs.' 37 By 1901 the pest had virtually disappeared: the natural enemies of the cutworm, disease and parasites and predators, had led to its demise. Fletcher's other great insect foe was the small, insidious, scale insect, known from the valley in California, the San Jose scale. By 1897 its presence in British Columbia was confirmed. Because of its killing effect on fruit trees, and its persistence and survival on shade trees, it probably was very accurately named by scientists Quadra aspidiotus perniciosus - a truly pernicious pest. To view the whole saga of the scale insect from its rightful perspective, one must go back a few years before the turn of the century. The British Columbia Fruit Growers' Association had been formed in 1889 to protect and foster the fruit-growing industry in the west-coast province. It was vitally concerned about the importation of infested fruit or nursery stock, and its members began to agitate for legislation that would protect the growers from the entry of foreign pests, both insects and disease. In 1892 the legislature enacted The Horticultural Board Act, permitting the appointment of an 'Inspector of Fruit Pests', with the authority to reject and destroy all potentially dangerous, insectinfested, horticultural stock that reached Britsh Columbia ports of entry. Ernest Hutcherson was the first Inspector. R.M . Palmer succeeded Hutcherson in 1894 and in turn was replaced by Thomas Cunningham in 1906. To safeguard the rapidly expanding fruit-growing industry from the introduction of more pests from outside the province, a quarantine station was built in Vancouver

74 The first professionals in 1895. It was used for the inspection of all nursery stock that passed into the province from beyond its borders. In 1896, all fruit trees and vegetation that were suspected, or confirmed to be infested, were fumigated. The fumigation operation and the port inspection were supervised by Thomas Cunningham, while the tree-totree inspection of orchards was handled by R.M. Palmer until 1904. lt is largely due to the efforts of these two men that British Columbia was relatively free of imported insect pests during the initial expansion of the fruit-growing industry. It was during some energetic sleuthing in the orchards, in and around Victoria in 1896, that R.M. Palmer detected the presence of an unknown scale insect on some fruit trees in two of the orchards. Previous to that, the scale had been found at Kelowna, on the shore of Okanagan Lake, in 1894. Palmer ordered the trees destroyed because he was certain that the infestation was the San Jose scale. He stated the same in his annual report to the British Columbia Minister of Agriculture. When this report also reached Fletcher in Ottawa he became 'intensely interested in your record of the San Jose Scale on Vancouver Island,' and requested a sample of the scale so that its identity could be verified. Such a sample was submitted by Palmer, and when Fletcher acknowledged it he also certified that it was the dreaded 'pernicious' scale. Fletcher's sense of humour did not fail: he remarked to Palmer, who had just become the proud father of a son, 'I suppose you won't name the latter " San Jose," in commemoration of your historic discovery.' 38 Fletcher, being the thorough person he was, transmitted the sample of scale to L.O. Howard, Chief Entomologist, United States Department of Agriculture, in Washington, an expert entomologist and a specialist in identifying scale insects. Howard confirmed the identification. This menacing scale insect was established on the Canadian west coast and was in a postion to devastate the fruit crops. The scale insect had already been firmly established in eastern Canada where orchards in Chatham had received the initial infestation in 1894 on Simoni plum trees imported as nursery stock from Parry's Nurseries of New Jersey. 39 The orchards infested in Victoria undoubtedly had received nursery stock bearing the scales and these had arisen from shipments made from California or Washington. The threat to fruit trees was imminent. If it became widespread it could effectively wipe out the orchards on the island. Palmer and his associates were attempting to stamp out the infestation by having all infested trees removed and burned. Other trees were treated with salt, sulphur, and lime spray to kill the insects on the trees. This, however, would not insure against further infestation by inadvertent importation, although it would prevent the spread of insects to other orchards in the vicinity. Fruit growers were getting alarmed and were beginning to demand that a complete boycott be instituted against all nursery stock from known infested regions. Even the Dominion Entomologist was beseeched to take action. Because an embargo of American nursery stock could have serious diplomatic, trade, and scientific repercussions, the situation required some delicate handling.

75 James Fletcher, Dominion Entomologist The United States Congress was drafting at about the same time its own legislation to stop interstate shipments of infested nursery stock and produce. Canadians, and especially the British Columbia Fruit Growers' Association, were insisting on the complete exclusion of all plants and produce from the United States, and especially from California. It was felt that the scale would be carried on imported plums, apples, and so on, and British Columbia and Ontario fruit growers were insisting on preventive legislation. Even the politicians were being assailed by their constituents, demanding that something be done. These, especially Sidney Fisher, Minister of Agriculture, in turn sought Fletcher's advice. Fletcher told Fisher that the scale could be carried on both the imported nursery stock and on fruit, but that the latter method posed no threat to the Canadian fruit growers. By January 1898 the San Jose scale legal documents were being drawn up, and details were being verified. Fletcher was a constant source of information, for he wrote Fisher outlining what should be in the legislation. Referring to our conversation of yesterday, after a discussion of the matter of prohibitive legislation against the San Jose Scale with Dr. Saunders, I have the honour to suggest the following classes of plants be exempted from prohibition by the San Jose Scale Act : 1. Green house plants ( with the exception of roses) ii. Herbaceous perennials iii. Bedding plants. With regard to strawberry plants, in which there is a very large trade between Canada and the United States, we cannot yet find any sufficient evidence that there is the slightest danger from the importation of these plants, and would, therefore, suggest that the Customs Officials be instructed to consider these as 'herbaceous perennials,' which, indeed they are literally. Bulbs, tubers, and root stocks such as cannas, Irises, paeonies, might also be mentioned in these instructions, although they are not included within the usual technical interpretation of the word 'plant.' The countries known to be infested by the San Jose Scale are - Japan, Australia, Hawaii, and the United States.40

Fisher presented Bill 82, the San Jose Scale Act, to the House of Commons on 16 March 1898. He insisted that nursery stock from any part of the United States, as well as from Hawaii, Japan, and Australia, was affected by the bill. The latter countries would be designated in specific orders-in-council at a later date. He made a plea for the immediate passage of the bill so that importers would not take advantage of a delay and rush in many carloads of stock that could possibly be infested. In spite of one objection, opinion was overwhelmingly in favour of quick passage of the bill, even if a few individuals were hurt financially. The opposition supported the bill; it passed in one day, and was given royal assent on 18 March.

76 The first professionals The act prohibited the importation of'trees, shrubs, plants, vines, grafts, cuttings or buds, commonly called nursery stock, from countries in which the San Jose Scale was known to exist.' On the same day, orders-in-council named the United States, Australia, Japan, and the Hawaiian Islands as countries to which the act applied; and exempted the following plants from operations of the act: greenhouse plants with the exception of roses, herbaceous perennials, herbaceous bedding plants, all conifers, bulbs and tubers. 41 Pressure from eastern Canadian fruit growers to ease or retract the legislation had no effect. Prime Minister Laurier commended Fisher's actions and the passage of Bill 82. However, the work of the lobbyists continued. Pressure was applied to Clifford Sifton to see if he could get scale-susceptible trees imported into Manitoba, an area which was not really a fruit-growing area. Fisher stood firm, negating the request, and was supported in this stand by Fletcher. R.M. Palmer, the British Columbia Provincial Inspector of Fruit Pests, had been able to keep the scale out of his province. The provincial department and others wanted some nursery stock with which to experiment, and requested a ministerial order to sanction the importation of restricted vegetation. Palmer asked Fletcher's advice on this matter, and Fletcher, though praising the work of Palmer's branch, said the act was being strictly enforced, and even he had suffered because of it. The terms of the act were strictly adhered to in order to determine if the scale pest could be eradicated at home, and no more were to be allowed entry to start new infestations. In British Columbia, primarily through the vigilance of Palmer and Cunningham, operating under the capable and entomologically minded Deputy Minister, J.R. Anderson, the dreaded scale could make no headway. Any, and all, reports of suspected infestations were immediately checked out by Palmer. By the end of 1900 he was able to report to Fletcher : 'You will be glad to know that there is no San Jose Scale in the province. Reports of the presence of this dreaded pest from Salt Spring Island and Cowichan district, upon investigation, proved to be unfounded. ' 42 Fletcher was active in the effort to provide long-term protection against San Jose scale and other pests. In 1900, federal authorities took a further stand against the scale and all other destructive insect pests. On 4 April an act was passed to amend the San Jose Scale Act. This provided for the naming of ports of entry at which nursery stock from countries to which the act applied would be fumigated with hydrocyanic acid (HCN) gas. It had been discovered that the scale could be killed by the cyanide gas, and many fruit-growers, horticultural societies, nurserymen, and others had urged that it be used and that import restrictions be lifted. A further order-in-council of 25 April permitted the importation of roses, in leaf and in a growing condition, which had been propagated under glass. The authorities were

77 James Fletcher, Dominion Entomologist certain that if scale-free stock were put in greenhouses, only scale-free material would emerge. The Minister of Agriculture instructed that proper fumigating houses be built in the spring of the year at such points of the international boundary as would be most convenient to importers. Qualified superintendents were appointed at each of these stations, where nursery stock, trees, shrubs, and other plants that arrived for import could be treated with the gas for forty-five minutes. After treatment the material was repacked and sent to its destination. The expense of the operation was assumed by the government, but 'all shipments were made entirely at the risk of the shippers or consignees, the government assuming no risk whatever.' 43 Fumigating houses were built and operated in western Canada at Winnipeg and Vancouver. The latter was late in construction and was not operating in the spring, but it was kept open nearly all winter from 15 October 1900 to 15 March 1901. Thereafter the Vancouver station operated from I October to I May. The Winnipeg station operated from 15 March to 15 May and from I October to 7 December. A.K. Leith was appointed superintendent of the Winnipeg station; Tom Wilson was in charge at Vancouver. Provincial authorities had been operating a fumigating station in Vancouver ; now federal authorities were also operating one. The two stations had the same function, and some people worried about waste. However, it soon became clear that the federal station, under Tom Wilson, concerned itself with the San Jose scale, while the operations performed by Cunningham in the provincial station involved a complete line of inspection and fumigation of all material that might be afflicted with insects and/ or disease. 44 By order-in-council of 23 March 1900 and 31 May 1901, the Dakota cottonwood, or 'necklace poplar,' Populus monolifera , was to be admitted at the custom houses of Brandon and Winnipeg without fumigation. However, all nursery stock imported through the mails was subject to inspection and fumigation. Under the regulations enforced up to this time, the San Jose scale was almost completely curtailed. Although some further trouble was encountered in eastern Canada only two cases were discovered in British Columbia by 1908. 45 One infestation was found at Kaslo on Kootenay Lake. The afflicted orchard was carefully sprayed by the Inspector of Fruit Pests, thereby eliminating the hazard. The other infestation was found at Spence's Bridge and proved to be very severe. Apparently the scale had been there since 1894, four years before the act was passed. The orchard in which the scale was found was cut down; all the material was burned. This drastic action completely eliminated the scale from the area, leaving British Columbia scalefree eleven years after the first known introduction of the pest into the province. Although some parts of Canada perhaps had their major insect pests reduced in number, to the point of near extinction, official entomologists and interested

78 The first professionals amateurs did not relax their vigilance. Experiences of the past had shown that most of the harmful insect enemies of crops, forest, and man could and would return. Most vigilant of all was the Dominion Entomologist, who felt responsible for the welfare of many who would be affected by insects. Dr. L.O. Howard, United States Chief Entomologist, expressed constant amazement that one man, Fletcher, could serve the entomological needs of a nation. Furthermore, he was surprised that a government would expect him to do so. 46 It is entirely due to the remarkable genius of the man, his exceptional organizational ability, effervescent public speaking, his keen and analytical perceptual acumen, and a dedicated sense of loyalty to the aims of public service to agriculture that so much was accomplished. J.A. Guignard, Fletcher's assistant since 1892, was primarily involved in performing the duties of the Dominion Botanist. In 1899 Arthur Gibson was appointed to be Fletcher's assistant in entomology. One of the duties of the Dominion Entomologist was to make a representative collection of all injurious and beneficial insects of Canada. Gibson was an 'enthusiastic collector and an expert at mounting and preparing specimens.' 47 His expertise was fully utilized in the years that followed, and the collection that was started at that time has become the worldrenowned repository of insects known as the Canadian National Collection. Only Fletcher and Gibson were on hand to investigate the national insect pest potential and the life history and control of all insects that indicated noxious tendencies. Many of these were native pests, homegrown insects that had taken a liking to the domestic crops and gardens of the settlers. Others were brought into the country, either with settlers' effects or in imported materials. Some simply spread across the border, as did the Colorado potato beetle, and no amount of customs or immigration vigilance would stop such unwanted invasions. All Fletcher could do was to rely on his many correspondents to keep him informed of the insect situation, and to recommend those common sense control methods that were tried and true remedies, and thus keep the injurious insects at the lowest possible level of population. This, of course, meant insect control, probably with chemicals, of which Fletcher remarked: At the time the Experimental Farm system was organized, the words 'spraying' and 'spraying pump' were actually unknown as the names of a method and implement for distributing poisonous liquids in a fine stale of division to protect plants against parasitic enemies. Largely through the work of this Divl~ion, the benefits of this work have been made known and insisted upon, even at times against outspoken and inexplicable opposition by men holding prominent places among fruit-growers and farmers ... Undoubtedly one of the most important discoveries which has ever been made in practical entomology and horticulture is the utility of the arsenites as destroyers of leaf-eating insects. This, added to the invention of the spray-

79 James Fletcher, Dominion Entomologist ing nozzle ... Nothing has been yet brought forward of greater general utility and safety than Paris green.48

Thus with men and tools at hand, Canada could look forward to reliable and effective control of her noxious insect pests. In 1908 Fletcher reviewed the progress of entomology, the many threats of insect outbreaks, and the control recently effected by man: The injurious insects of the Dominion have all been carefully studied by experts in the Department. Not only, too, has special attention been given to those kinds which devastate crops, and thus materially lessen the profits of the farmers, but much valuable research work has been done on those insects which are distinctly beneficial and therefore friends of the agriculturist and horticulturist ... Information has been at once made known to the farmers and others, by the publication of departmental pamphlets or special articles in the agricultural and daily press. Fumigation stations have been erected at important ports of entry, along the border where nursery stock, on entering Canada, is fumigated with hydrocyanic gas, to kill the dreaded San Jose Scale. The history of the Mediterranean Flour Moth which first appeared in Canada in 1889, was investigated and the advantage of freezing the insects by opening the mills to the cold of winter was pointed out among other remedies. The cigar case-bearer of the apple was first studied in 1891, and further original observations were made in 1894. The Hop Vine Borer, which did so much damage in the hop fields in l 892, was studied and the habits of the insect made known. The same year, new facts were learned regarding the life history of the Red Turnip Beetle, which is a bad pest to cruciferous crops in the western prairie provinces. In 1894, the injurious Pea Moth was investigated ... The Joint Worm, which attacks wheat, was investigated in l 895 and valuable information was obtained on the habits of this enemy of this important cereal ... Mention of the Wheat-stem Maggot in Canada, was first made known by the Department in l 896, when an outbreaK which occurred in the Northwest was studied ... In l 897 the San Jose Scale was given much study and a long account of it was published.for the benefit of horticulturists and nursery men. In l 898 the Rocky Mountain Locust did much damage in southern Manitoba and required special investigation by the Department. The following year the Hessian Fly appeared in the spring wheat fields of Manitoba, and called for much study. The same year, the destructive Pea Aphis first appeared in Canada, as did also the Asparagus Beetles ... Un 1900) one of the most remarkable outbreaks of an injurious Cutworm, occurred in British Columbia, and did damage in this province and the adjoining States to the south estimated at over $2,000,000. In 1901, new observations on the life habits of the Variable Cutworm were published, as also information on a new enemy of conifers, known scientifically as Semiophora youngi. The Sugar Beet Webworm was studied in 1903, owing to

80 The first professionals the damage it did in Manitoba. Special attention was also given to the White marked Tussock Moth which has done so much harm to shade trees in many Canadian cities ... The Rusty Tussock Moth also called for special investigation in 1907, as did the Hop Flea Beetle which has been so very destructive in the hop yards of British Columbia. Besides the above, injurious insects upon which the Department has done special work, the commoner and bener known enemies of the farmer, fruit grower, etc. have been carefully studied, and numerous articles published on such, as the Codling Moth, the Plum Curculio, the Colorado Potato Beede, the Root Maggots, Grasshoppers, Oyster-shell Scale, White Grubs, Pea Weevils, Flea Beetles, etc. etc.49

With Fletcher at the helm the future of entomology in Canada appeared to be bright and assuring. His sudden death, however, on 8 November 1908, marked the end of an era.

5

The North-West (Canada) Entomological Society

Near the end of the nineteenth century settlers had been pouring into western Canada at a steady pace. In 1877 John Macoun, who travelled through the west and extolled the virtues and productivity of prairie land, was called a fool, nay, a criminal fool, for wanting people to come into the territories. These doubts had long been dispelled, particularly when by 1904 more than 60 million bushels of wheat had been produced in Palliser's 'Canadian desert.' Now more and more settlers were immigrating to new lands. With the spread of immigration westward and northward, the insects followed, or at least they became noticed. Up to now these creatures had been largely ignored. Many insects were inadvertently imported in settlers' effects, in lumber, on domestic animals, or in packing material such as hay, straw, or grass. Settlers in the Alberta territory could have, and probably did, bring willing but undesirable and foreign insect guests with them; and each immigrant group had insect problems common to all. Thus it became apparent that all should become familiar with their insect enemies and learn the common methods of control. Among the settlers at Blackfalds, Alberta, near Lacombe, was an Englishman, Percy B. Gregson. He had extensive training, as well as a consuming interest in insects and natural history. Because he was a collector of insects he soon became aware of a number of other 'amateur' entomologists in the territories. In 1898, he, together with A.D. Gregson, F.H. Wolley-Dod, A.G. Wolley-Dod, N. Sanson, and a number of others, decided that more attention should be given to the noxious insects of the great northwest. They formed the North-West (Canada) Entomological Society, the principal aim of which was to interest and instruct the farmers of the region about the insects that would affect their persons, their animals, their crops, and their homes. The president of the new society was, as expected, Percy Gregson. The aims, objectives, and desires of the society were outlined, by letter, and sent to everyone

82 The first professionals

that the president thought would be interested or helpful in this new venture. LO. Howard, Chief Entomologist of the United States Department of Agriculture, the bishop of Calgary and Saskatchewan, H.H . Lyman and Rev. CJ.S. Bethune of the Entomological Society of Ontario, F. Oliver, member of Parliament for Edmonton, and C.W. Peterson, Deputy Commissioner of Agriculture, Regina, were all contacted, and all pledged their support. All the early collectors of insects were represented on the membership roster. These included E.F. Heath, A.J . Dennis, A.W. Hanham, T.N. Willing, Rev. Mathew White, A.D. Gregson, Rev. J. Hinchcliffe, W. Wenham, F.H. Wolley-Dod, A.G. Wolley-Dod, and N.B. Sanson. Also joining were many interested local farmers. James Fletcher became aware of the society's existence through a letter forwarded to him.' Fletcher wrote to Gregson on 26 January 1899: I am delighted to hear of the formation of this Society. I did not know that there were a sufficient number of entomologists in the North-west Territories to form a Society. There are a few in Manitoba, and if you could send me a list of your members I might be able to give you the names of a few others interested in these mailers who would be glad to join and assist you in your work. For my own part, I shall be glad to help you by naming specimens sent here for that purpose, and I may mention that all such may be sent to me free of postage. You probably understand the packing of bu11erflies in envelopes and the pinning of moths for transmission by mail.

Gregson lost no time in sending him the information requested. Fletcher replied on 14 February, You do indeed seem to have started with much enthusiasm, and if you gel only a quarter of your members to do something at the work of collecting and making a list of the Lepidoptera of the North-west it will be grand work for science. I know Mr. Oliver, your Member, pre11y well, having met him here, as well as in the West ... There is one man that you ought to secure as a member, - Mr. T .N . Willing, of Olds, Alta. He is an enthusiastic botanist and an excellent collector. He is now turning his allention to diurnals and has already a considerable number ... You seem 10 have got your Board of Directors down to the simplest form, and I should think that there would be li11le chance for jealousies or troubles among the Directors ... I shall indeed be much pleased to become an honorary member of your Socieiy, and trust that your members will make every use of me possible.'

This set the pace for the society and resulted in group enthusiasm seldom encountered in an organization. LO. Howard sent them many bound, and unbound, reports and publications of the United States Department of Agriculture. E. Baynes Reed and C.J.S. Bethune sent the entire set of the reports of the Entomological

83 The North-West (Canada) Entomological Society Society of Canada; Fletcher donated a full set of his reports as Dominion Entomologist. A Mr Edmond sent the society a microscope. Not among the least of the gifts received by the society were specimens of insects. All the collectors eagerly donated some spare or extra specimens, some of which were common but others rare and valuable. Even the president, Gregson, added a number of printed works on geology, entomology, and botany. After this auspicious start, the society remained in high gear. Because its aim was to help the agricultural community and the farmers, it was particularly intent on having the backing of every local agricultural society. At the end of three years it had the support of the societies at Wetaskiwin, Lacombe, Red Deer, Innisfail, Olds, Calgary, Regina, Moose Jaw, and central Saskatchewan. 3 At the first annual meeting, held at Lacombe, Alberta, in the Agricultural Hall on 7 November 1899, Gregson outlined some of the work he wanted to see done, namely : (1) give, once a month, an illustrated lecture or sketch, in the local Public Schools before the children and their parents on insect life or other phase of nature and its economic value. (2) to call quarterly meetings at different points of the members of the Society, to which the public will be specially invited, for interchange of experiences, etc., and receiving accounts of new insects and weeds. (3) to submit short papers for reading and discussion at the meetings of local Agricultural Societies. 4

These were high ideals, but they were quite well attained. At the second annual meeting of the society, again held at Lacombe, on 16 January 1901, Percy Gregson could report some encouraging results. He had given twelve lectures or papers to farmers at various places in the Territories during the year. Five school 'sketches' were held and a field class of young folk had been started in Lacombe. This remarkable success was recognized by the territorial government in Regina. A grant of$25 was gifted to the society and was to be an annual award to bolster the objectives of the society.5 The annual membership fee was set at $I. In 1900, the third year of operation, only 26 members paid their dues. The total expenses amounted to $89.50. After the territorial Government had contributed its grant of$25, a deficit of$38.50 faced the society. This amount was paid personally by Gregson. In fact, he met many of the financial obligations of the fledgling society in a similar manner. No balance-sheet or statement of expenditures was submitted after the first full year of operation because, 'In founding the Society the President elected to defray every expense, until its objects should have been appreciated, and a course of procedure formulated.' The work of the society was appreciated, whether there were guide-lines or

84 The first professionals not, and whether the funding was sufficient or not, for the president 'picked up' the deficit. Gregson's action in personally assuming the financial obligations of the society, in devoting all of his 'spare' time in bringing entomology to the people, and by being elected the only president the society ever had, indicated the unselfish devotion of the man to science and to his neighbour. At the third annual meeting of the society, at Lacombe on 9 November 1901, further progress was reported. Prizes, donated by James Fletcher and consisting of standard works in entomology, were offered the young people of Lacombe and district. Master Benjamin H . Howell of Lacombe took first prize for presenting the largest collection of insects. Master D.E. Tipping of Waghorn was awarded second prize for his collection of noxious and beneficial insects. Third prize, donated by the society, was presented to Miss Lucy McL. Howell of Lacombe, for having made the best collection of wild plants and weeds. One of the more successful projects completed by the society was in co-operation with T .N. Willing. A collection of ripe weed seeds, in labelled bottles, representing nearly every species of noxious weed in the Territories, was presented to each of the affiliated agricultural societies. This permitted every farmer to see what weeds he had to contend with in his district. Education was always uppermost in the minds of members of the society. Gregson was able to get three teachers from the Lacombe district actively interested in the work of the society. The school trustees also supported the aims of the organization and it was hoped that 'Nature Study' would be added to the curriculum, which it was in a year's time. Plans were also formulated to create natural history museums at the schools in Red Deer and Lacombe. The students were to make the collections and add to them every year. The Lacombe Field Club comprised 22 members by the time the fourth annual meeting was held in the Calgary High School on 5 November 1902. The Red Deer Field Club was also being organized. These clubs were more than just 'entomological clubs,' for many were present whose interests included all disciplines of natural history. It was therefore quite natural that the strictly entomologically oriented members were a shrinking minority. The astute president, Gregson, was aware of the diversity of interests of the members and the steady decline in the number of active members. At the end of the third year of its existence, the secretary-treasurer of the society had removed 30 names from the member's roll because membership dues had not been paid. Only 37 members helped the society by cash or kind. 6 The declining trend was of concern, but it was not hopeless. A plan had been formulated to save the society. It was proposed to change its objectives and the name, widen its sphere of interest and influence, and carry on.

85 The North-West (Canada) Entomological Society The financial sheet was once more in the 'red,' in the amount of $40. The previous year a deficit of$10, out of a total financial transaction of$6o, had been met by the president. Apparently the deficit of the 1902 fiscal year was too much for Gregson, for he did not 'pick up the tab.' The debt would have to remain a debt; it was time to take drastic action. Percy Gregson addressed the assembled members at the annual meeting once more. This time he had arrived, as he said, 'at one of the saddest episodes in the history of the Entomological Society, namely its suicide.' 7 He proposed the dissolution of the society, not to death and oblivion, but to a new restructured birth as a 'Natural History Society.' This would allow its members to function with greater scope for work and he hoped they would all transfer their allegiance to the proposed new society. On a motion by T .N. Willing, seconded by C.W. Peterson, and carried by the members, the society was dissolved, having lasted only five years, from 1898 to 1902. On a motion by Gregson, seconded by Wolley-Dod, and approved by the members present, a new society was born, the 'Territorial Natural History Society.' Gregson was elected first president of the new society; the debt of $40 of the old entomological society followed him into office. The old society, now subsumed in the new, had performed the invaluable task of bringing together many western entomologists - both 'amateur' and 'professional' and of encouraging in western Canada an awareness of the crucial role of insects and those who study them. Many members of the Entomological Society were to play important parts in the western expansion of the federal entomological service which began in earnest a decade later.

6

Western expansion: Hewitt, Criddle, and Strickland

Arthur Gibson, Chief Assistant to the Dominion Entomologist, was appointed Dominion Entomologist, pro tern, in succession to James Fletcher, on 26 January 1909. It soon became apparent that the scientific achievements and endeavours of the federal service had to be maintained at a superior level, and had to be led by a distinguished biologist. Gibson was only a junior entomologist, although he 'campaigned' vigorously for the job and had many influential American entomologists supporting his application. The search for a replacement was not conducted in the United States, and many Americans felt they had been snubbed. A search was made in Great Britain and on I May 1909 C. Gordon Hewitt of Manchester University was appointed. All eyes were now focused on the young man to see if he would measure up to the standards set by his predecessor. Because of unfinished business in England, Hewitt did not take up his official duties in Ottawa until after the summer, arriving on 16 September 1909. The job appeared formidable especially in view of the progress made in agriculture since settlement began in Canada. Fletcher had seemed to have unlimited energies which permitted him to carry the dual load of entomological and botanical duties, but Hewitt considered this to be too much for one man. Further, 'the need for further development of entomological work and investigation, and the increasing demands for advice, in addition to the increase of other duties of an administrative and executive character, necessitated the separation of the entomological and botanical work and the formation of a separate Division of Entomology." This separation permitted Hewitt to devote all of his energies to entomology, a task for which he was qualified, having received excellent basic academic training and a doctorate in zoology and entomology. With the birth of the new Division of Entomology, and an indication of increased demands and the need to further the development of entomological endeavours,

87 Western expansion: Hewitt, Criddle, and Strickland more problems loomed up to challenge the new regime. Early in January 1909, word was received from George G. Atwood, Chief of the Bureau of Horticulture, Department of Agriculture, at Albany, New York, that members of his staff had found winter nests containing larvae of the brown-tail moth, Nygmia phaeorrhoea, on fruit seedlings of European nursery stock. Inspection work was increased in New York and Ontario. When living larvae were detected by Gibson in shipments arriving in Canada, it became apparent that the federal entomological service would have to assist the provincial bodies in inspection and quarantine work. The San Jose Scale Act of 1898 gave the inspectors, such as Tom Wilson in Vancouver, the power to seize, hold, fumigate, or destroy all nursery stock infested with the scale. They did not have the legal right to do so if the vegetation was afflicted with any other kind of insect or disease. Furthermore, 'the sole purpose of the government federal fumigation houses is for the cleansing of the stock from the San Jose scale, and there is no legislation whatever of the same nature against any other insects." The government of British Columbia could, under provision of the Horticultural Board Act, condemn and destroy nursery stock upon which insects other than San Jose scale were found. Thus, by well-informed co-operation between the federal and provincial fumigating and inspection houses, all injurious insects could be kept out of British Columbia. However, this was not the case for any other province, save Ontario, which had legislation of its own, similar to that in British Columbia. But now was the time to get federal legislation that would permit Hewitt and his staff to exercise greater control over foreign insects, such as the brown-tail moth, at the federal level. The latter had been found in shipments from British Columbia and the same insect was already firmly established in Nova Scotia by 1909. Hewitt found it necessary to request statutory authority 'to prevent the introduction of this pest into those parts of Canada not already infested and its spreading in regions where it had become established.' 3 Hewitt and H.T. Giissow - the latter the new Dominion Botanist - wrote the legislation. On 19 November 1909, Sidney Fisher introduced the following resolution in the House of Commons: 'Resolved that it is expedient to pass an Act to prevent the introduction or spreading of insects, pests and disease destructive to vegetation; providing for the granting of compensation for matter destroyed for this purpose, the appointment of inspectors for the enforcement of the Act, and penalties for its contravention.' 4 The Destructive Insect and Pest Act was passed on 17 March 1910, and given royal assent on 4 May. All the necessary legal armament required to adequately prevent injurious pests from entering into, or spreading, in Canada was embodied in the act. The new legislation made the San Jose Scale Act obsolete, and it was repealed concomitant with the introduction of the new act. The first list of destructive insects to which the act was specifically directed included the San Jose

88 The first professionals scale, brown-tail moth, woolly apple aphid, and the West Indian peach scale. 5 Many more would be added, in later years, but for the moment these four were of prime importance and would serve to get the legislation in running order. The new act provided more funds than had been made available hitherto for entomological purposes, and Hewitt was determined to expand the federal entomological services to all parts of the dominion, wherever insects demanded attention. The insects soon provided a reason for such expansion. The presence of the brown-tail moth in Nova Scotia in 1907, and the arrival of infested nursery stock from other countries into Canada, required closer inspection by quarantine authorities, but such work to date had been hampered by a shortage of staff. R.C. Treherne was therefore appointed by Hewitt as a special inspector in 1909, and G.E. Sanders as a second inspector after the 1910 act went into force. The increased amount of money available also enabled Hewitt to hire two more men sorely needed to round out the staff and thus permit the adequate handling of the increased entomological load. Hewitt showed an uncanny ability to pick the right man for the job. First he appointed J.M. Swaine, a recent graduate with a master's degree from Cornell, and lecturer in entomology at Macdonald College in McGill University, to head the investigation of forest insects. This move had far-reaching effects for the western provinces. Not only would it give an impetus to studies of insects affecting the vast timber resources of western and north-western Canada but it would also vitalize investigations of the many pests of shelter belts in the open plains region of the prairies. In simple fact, Swaine's appointment was the beginning of forest entomology in Canada. At the outset, the bark beetles, spruce budworm, and larch sawfly were the principal insect pests which required attention; many more would be included as the years wore on. Hewitt's second appointment was J.D. Tothill, whose principal duties were to direct the introduction and establishment of insect parasites in Canada. At the outset, Tothill was to find parasites that would attack, and thereby control, the gypsy and brown-tail moths. The appointment began what later expanded into intense research work concerning the nature of biological control of the fall webworm, tent caterpillar, spruce bud worm, and a host of other insects, culminating in the establishment of the Biological Control Institute at Belleville, Ontario. 6 Fruit insects were causing an incredible amount of loss to orchardists and the problem seemed to be increasing because of the expansion of the fruit-growing industry. Hewitt decided that this group of insects needed special attention also. W.A. Ross, who had been an employee of the Ontario Department of Agriculture in an investigation of the apple maggot and plum curculio, was called upon to head the project. Ross assembled and controlled a prodigious organization - the Fruit Insect Investigation Unit; Hewitt had made another brilliant decision.

89 Western expansion: Hewitt, Criddle, and Strickland The increase in staff in 1911 included another first for entomology. J .A. Letourneau, clerk and stenographer to the Dominion Entomologist since 1907, was promoted to Chief Clerk. Miss Jane Mcinnes was appointed as Hewitt's secretary, thereby becoming the first woman ever appointed to an entomological staff position in Canada. She would be followed by many more in the years to come, for women have always participated in all entomological duties, be they scientific, "clerical, investigatory, or technical. With the appointment of Ross, R.C. Treherne was now freed of these duties and could be used elsewhere, namely in western Canada. His move westward was the first step taken by the federal entomological authorities in establishing field laboratories west of the Great Lakes. Treherne had devoted some of his time observing and recording the activities of a number of fruit pests in the Vineland, Ontario, district. In May 1912, he was transferred to Hatzic, in the Lower Fraser valley of British Columbia. The Entomology Division did not have any physical facilities for his occupancy. Through the courtesy of a farmer, Arthur Brealey, a fruit-grower at Hatzic, the division was permitted to establish a temporary field station on his farm. The prime purpose of this arrangement was to permit Treherne to investigate the life-history, habits, and control of the strawberry root weevil, Brachyrhinus ovacus, which was in abundant supply on many of the farmers' fields. 7 These insects were pests also on the farm of A. Brealy, although other insects of fruit, root maggots in gardens, and tent caterpillars in orchards, had to receive some attention from Treherne. 8 In all probability it was politically expedient and economically sound for the federal government to do the first entomological work in the Lower Fraser valley. The Dominion Experimental Farm at Agassiz had been one of the original five farms authorized by Parliament in the 1886 act, and had been established in the valley in 1888. It was therefore deemed wise to place the insect work in an area where the federal department had already established a firm foothold. Furthermore, the Agassiz farm was at what was then the centre of the cultivated, agricultural area at the far eastern end of the Lower Fraser valley. The main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway made the place accessible. Moreover, the establishment of the Entomological Laboratory at Agassiz (actually in adjacent Hatzic) placed it in the very presence of the Health of Animals Laboratory where Seymour Hadwen was working with, and interested in, animals affected by warble flies, fleas, and lice. So while Treherne laboured at Hatzic, in temporary quarters for the 1912 season, other accommodation was being built at Agassiz. The new quarters were to be the headquarters for federal entomological work in British Columbia, a permanent establishment for the study of insects of the province. The building into which Treherne moved in the spring of 1913 contained a working laboratory, insectary, living room and store room, and a lavatory. This 'lab'

90

The first professionals

was to remain a focal point of entomological endeavour for many years to come, harbouring such notable investigators as A.B. Baird, R. Glendenning, and H .G. Fulton. While events of entomological import were transpiring in British Columbia, other equally important events were occurring elsewhere in western Canada. Norman Criddle did not vanish from the Manitoba scene after perfecting his 'Criddle Mixture' and surviving the grasshopper plague of 1898 to 1904. He had struck up a lasting acquaintanceship with James Fletcher in 1900 and was encouraged to pursue his interests in entomology and botany. His paintings of weeds, grasses, and native flowers led to employment in Ottawa where Fletcher used these talents to further the artistic portrayal of Canadian flora. He spent the winters of 1900-5 illustrating farm weeds for the department.9 From 1906 to 1908, he assisted Fletcher in collecting weed seeds, but continued his hobby of collecting insects. The former job was a good financial venture because the whole Criddle family, both boys and girls nieces and nephews of Norman Criddle - made some good pocket money by collecting the seeds of noxious weeds.'° For the next three winters, 1910-13, Criddle worked as a seed analyst for the Dominion Department of Agriculture in Calgary. While there he received a letter from Hewitt that was to swing his interests, and his personal preferences, onto an entomological track which he was destined not to leave. This letter, dated 15 February 1912, 11 requested Criddle to take a position with the Division of Entomology. The position was for six months of the year at a salary of $100 per month. The offer was less than he was making as a seed analyst and he was in a quandary as to whether he would accept it. However, there were two convincing points in favour of acceptance: he could work with his first love, the insects, and he could work at home, at the farm near Aweme, Manitoba. On 19 February 1912, Criddle wrote Hewitt accepting the offer, providing he could start work after I May; Hewitt responded on 27 February that a permanent entomological field station was to be established in Manitoba. Three species of insects, white grubs, the Hessian fly, and the wheat stem sawfly, were causing grave concern in Manitoba and the Division of Entomology was going to appoint someone - hopefully Norman Criddle - to investigate these. On I I July, however, Hewitt informed him that the division was 'broke'. He could not hire him in 1912, but would try to obtain a larger appropriation in 1913 and make him another offer. On 15 January 1913, Criddle was asked if he would be available at $100 per month, or perhaps SI 500 per annum if the field station were established on the Criddle farm at Aweme. Criddle agreed to such an arrangement but warned Hewitt he was a self-taught man with no college training. Hewitt replied that he was aware of this but would indeed be glad to hire him despite the lack of formal academic training. Once more Hewitt demonstrated his uncanny ability to pick the right man, for Criddle proved to be the greatest asset to entomology that western Canada has

91 Western expansion: Hewitt, Criddle, and Strickland

ever experienced. To many, if not most, of his colleagues, Norman Criddle was the dean of entomology in western Canada. On 15 May 1913, the long-awaited message arrived. The telegram from C.G. Hewitt read 'APPOINTED TEMPORARY FIELD OFFICER. COMMENCE IMMEDIATE OBSERVATION ON LACHNOSTERNA. WRITING.' The letter that followed brought the whole world of officialdom down upon the simple man from Aweme. In the past he was able to enjoy his insect collecting, his painting of plants and flowers, and his observations of avian and mammalian behaviour. Now Hewitt commanded him to 'make immediate observations' and proclaimed that 'while you are in the government's employ all insects collected will be the property of the Division.' The days of the carefree collector were over! From this day forward the Dominion Entomological Laboratory at Treesbank, and its officer-in-charge, Norman Criddle, would endure the vicissitudes of 'red tape.' There were to be telegrams and night letters directing his activities because of an insect outbreak, or the request from someone for an investigation of an entomological crisis. There would be 'instructions as to conduct' and rejection and criticisms, as well as upbraidings concerning expense accounts. There would be a lot of hard work ahead and no overtime pay to collect. To all this Criddle responded with the greatest aplomb. When F.W.L. Sladen, Assistant Entomologist for Apiculture, asked him to collect bumble bees, Criddle's quiet subdued sense of humour bubbled forth in his reply: 'My knowledge, however, of collecting nests is rudimentary and my experience when examining them has, more often than not, been painful.' As for work, he responded: 'I have been putting in 12 hours a day at official labours ... had to make a special Sunday trip after E. aurulenta , that being the only time available. At night I am out after Lachnosterna .' 12

Criddle's performance was unchallenged. His keen powers of observation and deduction led him to try the unusual. He noted that when pitch forks were left standing against a straw- or haystack, the handles were often roughened by grasshoppers eating the wood of the handles. If the insects would eat wood impregnated with salty sweat, then, he reasoned, they may be induced to eat wood chips washed with salt and seasoned with arsenite. His experiments along these lines finally culminated in the use of sawdust as a carrier of the poison used in baits for insect control. 13 His work with white grubs, Hessian fly, wheat stem sawfly, wheat stem maggot, cutworms, and a host of minor insect pests led to many published articles explaining the biology and life histories of these insects. He preferred to work with grasshoppers and these insects became his prime target for study and his major lifelong endeavour. In March 1914, Criddle submitted an estimate of the cost of construction of a new laboratory to Hewitt. The building, 12 by 16 feet, was to cost $151, plus $14 for the concrete foundation. When this reached Ottawa an immediate reply was sent back

92 The first professionals 10 March saying, in effect, that the cost was much too exorbitant. Hewitt suggested that an insectary be built, instead, for a cost of about $40 or $50. A new laboratory could wait for a year. Authorization for a new building was given in April 1915. Criddle was required to oversee the construction but was forced to lend a hand because 'it was impossible to secure labour otherwise.' The bill for building materials, in the amount of $108.40, as invoiced by Drake and Vane of Treesbank, was submitted on 31 May. Other costs were well within the $151 limit quoted a year earlier! The site was provided by Percy Criddle, Norman's father. The Criddle farm also provided excellent facilities for field and experimental plot work. 14 Criddle occupied the new laboratory building on 7 May 1915. Another western appointment, in Alberta, was made in response to a specific agricultural problem. Cutworms had been a common cause for complaint by farmers, gardeners, and agriculturists generally. The red-backed cutworm, Euxoa ochrogaster, had been collected by the early naturalist-collectors such as Wolley-Dod in Alberta, and had caused considerable trouble to growers, especially in gardens since the I 890s. The variegated cutworm, Peridroma saucia, caused consternation, confusion, and devastation in an unprecedented outbreak in British Columbia in 1900. The army cutworm, Euxoa auxiliaris, was known to gardeners from Regina to Calgary by 1902. 15 In 191 I cutworms were generally injurious all across Canada. In Saskatchewan and Alberta the larval worms were unusually numerous, and unlike former years, when garden, vegetable, and root crops were most often attacked, the worms now turned to cereal crops. 16 The first report of crop damage came in June from Monarch, Alberta, indicating that 520 acres of wheat had been destroyed. The cutworm larvae responsible for the damage were identified by F.H. WolleyDod as those of the pale western cutworm, Agrotis orthogonia. The adult moths had been collected earlier by T.N. Willing, at Regina, on 10 August 1904, and had also been received from High River, Alberta, as early as 1908. Now in 1911 came the first indication that the insect had become a serious field crop pest. Apparently this pest status had been attained only after native range lands were cultivated and the 'growing of grain became widespread in the prairies of the United States and Canada.'' 7 In 1912 the damage to grain crops by the pale western cutworm, and others, continued unabated. Southern Alberta seemed to be the region most severely affected; the infestation extended from Claresholm in the northwest and Turin in the northeast, to Spring Coulee and Wagner in the southwest and southeast, respectively: They were particularly destructive to garden crops, including cabbages, turnips, onions, peas, beets and carrots, and in addition to destroying wheat, which was the chief crop

93 Western expansion: Hewitt, Criddle, and Strickland attacked, they ate oats, barley and timothy. The damage was reported to have commenced about the middle of April and to have extended into the middle of June. The most destructive species appeared to be Prosagrot is delorat a Sm. (Agrotis orthogonia Morr.I and Euxoa ochrogaster Gn. The ordinary remedial measures for cutworms did not prove effectual, and on this account, together with the fact that one of the species (P. delorata) was a new pest, arrangements have been made for a thorough investigation into the outbreak. 18

Having made the decision to find out all there was to know about cutworms, Hewitt now had the task of finding the right man to head the investigation. A young man, E.H . Strickland, born in England in 1889, was at Harvard, where he had been sent by the Colonial Office, on a Carnegie studentship, to study entomology. He had earned his MSc degree, under W.M. Wheeler, in 1913, and Hewitt convinced the Colonial Office that he could use this young man and give him some valuable field experience in economic entomology. He would place him in southern Alberta where he would have him undertake studies of the new cutworm pest. The Colonial Office agreed, and Strickland was hired on 18 March 1913. As was the case with all the field laboratories established by the Division of Entomology, there were no physical facilities, no building, no equipment, and no supplies - only a new man. For Strickland, his headquarters were at the Lethbridge Experimental Farm, where the director, W.H. Fairfield, provided him with the necessary accommodation. It was not palatial, and when he arrived for duty in April 1913 he found that the new one-man field station was a room in the attic of the sheep-barn, later moved to an implement shed. The other necessities for the investigatory work were not any better. In a letter dated 26 April 1913, 19 Strickland acknowledged the barn space that had been made available to him, and further informed Hewitt that a box of apparatus was at hand. This box of equipment contained '1 dissecting needle, straight; I dissecting needle, curved; I scalpel; J.M. Swaine's net."0 The meagre supplies may have been offset somewhat by a paycheck which he received on 30 April : 'being the amount of your salary from March 18th when you left England to the 30th inst.,' in the amount of $188.71. To get the young entomologist off on the right foot , C.G. Hewitt sent Arthur Gibson, his chief assistant, to Alberta also, so that a 'thorough investigation of the infested districts could be made.' They found that some fields had 'from three to eleven [worms) to the square foot,' and because they fed below the surface of the soil the usually reliable poisoned bran bait would prove to be unsuccessful. Strickland had his work cut out for him, for there were other insect problems he would have to take care of as well. The years immediately prior to the First World War were busy ones for the new western entomologists. British Columbia now had a laboratory and an entomologist;

94 The first professionals Alberta had a resident entomologist; and Manitoba had an insectary and a laboratory with an entomologist in charge. Normal Criddle had been installed as a field officer at Treesbank so that he could officially participate in an international program dealing with the control of white grubs. This was, in part, a co-operative project with the United States Bureau of Entomology, and all aspects of investigation were precisely outlined. All Canadian officers were to participate, including Strickland. However, Hewitt warned him that it would not be possible for him to 'carry on any extensive breeding experiments on Lachnosterna [white grubs) owing to the fact that you are to devote all the necessary time to the cutworm work."' By mid-July, when most of the cutworm rampage was over, and a breather was in the offing, Strickland received a telegram from Hewitt: 'IMMEDIATELY INVESTIGATE WHEAT INJURIES OF JOHN MUSGRAVE COWLEY ALBERTA AND DISTRICT WRITING.'

In the follow-up letter he was told: 'He Uohn Musgrave] informs me that the trouble appears to be in the first joint from the root and is only found on old land that has previously been seeded to wheat. He reports that one man has absolutely nothing to cut on three hundred acres and ... causing loss of five to ten bushels per acre ... Kindly report to me immediately the results of your examination." 2 For the next five days Strickland made an extensive survey of the Cowley district on his motorcycle - cars were unheard of - a new Indian Twin 1913 Model. On 19 July Strickland reported to Hewitt: I left here for Cowley upon the 15th, on the motor cycle ... I had tire trouble ... return by train ... sent the machine [back) by express ... In 1902 some wheat was brought in to the country from Kansas (?} by a man named Thompson (did not check the spelling of this name}. It seems that it was due to this importation that the Eelworm, which is causing all the damage, was let loose in this country. The crops grown from this Wheat were seen to turn somewhat yellow in the Spring but nothing very serious was noticed until 1908.2 3

This report was not entirely a surprise to Hewitt, for he had received some damaged plants from the Raymond, Alberta, area in September 1912, and found eel worms in the stems. 24 This was the first report and record of injury to cereal crops by eel worms in North America. Strickland was fortunate, entomologically, in being the first to investigate this pest, as well as the pale western cutworm. Reports of eelworm injury to crops kept coming to Strickland from many parts of Alberta. There were investigations of damage at the farm of Clara Thompson (Spring Coulee), LB. Roberts (Raymond), L.E. Dimsdale (Fishburn), and many others. Wrapped up as he was in the eelworm and cutworm work, it did not permit him much leisure time when he also had administrative duties to attend to.

95 Western expansion: Hewitt, Criddle, and Strickland One of the extra duties dropped on Strickland and Criddle was that of the annual report. Every field officer was required to write a 2500- to 3000-word annual report, plus a 250- to 500-word summary report of activities of the entomological laboratory in his charge. These reports were due in Ottawa by the end of November officialdom had to have its paper 'pound of flesh,' no matter how much time it took away from investigatory insect work. The natural growth of the country resulted in an increase in the number of fruit and shade trees, ornamentals, and other plants imported into Canada. To meet this increase, and to encourage more tree planting in the prairie provinces, the importation process needed accelerating, and more fumigation and inspection services had to be provided. A new fumigation station was built in 1913 at North Portal, Saskatchewan, on the Canadian Pacific Railway route. It was to serve as a port of entry and plant quarantine station for Saskatchewan and Alberta. This was just one more duty for a field officer, that of a nursery stock inspector and fumigator, at a place far removed from headquarters. The 'pioneer' federal entomologists were dedicated men, and all tasks were dutifully performed. Even though Strickland became involved with the fumigation station at North Portal, his visits were not too frequent. T.R. Waddington, a resident of that town, was appointed as superintendent of the fumigation station in November 1913, with duties to commence on 15 March of the following year. However, it still remained for Strickland to be on hand at the beginning of the sp"ring season and to teach Waddington the proper procedures and safeguards of fumigation. In the spring of 1914, both Strickland and Criddle were back at their respective field stations, having spent the winter at headquarters in Ottawa. For Criddle, the annual east-for-the-winter and west-for-the-summer routine was to become the normal routine of activities. For Strickland, the east-west shuffle was performed annually until he went on active duty in the First World War. When Strickland returned to Lethbridge in March 1914, he returned to the same inadequate quarters on the Experimental Farm. Here he planned and initiated an extensive program of cutworm-rearing for purposes of testing poisoned baits and parasite infections. By May, the outbreak of the pale western cutworm was once more in full swing in southern Alberta, so much so that he was soon swamped with calls for assistance and advice. He requested an assistant, but Gibson denied the request on grounds of fiscal restraint and national austerity. However, the Dominion Entomologist was always on the offensive for his staff, and was able to shake loose some more federal funds. On 7 June he telegraphed Strickland to employ a suitable university student, as extra labour. Strickland did find a helper, H. Hamilton; but the help came almost too late to do much good. The 1914 cutworm season was almost over. In August Strickland

96 The first professionals

requested funds for a two-roomed laboratory, a student assistant, and a new twospeed motorcycle to facilitate his travel. By the end of April 1915, he had received permission to build his laboratory, hire a summer assistant, F.M. Walsh, and acquire a new motorcycle ( with a side-car for his assistant). Having supplied Strickland with most of the things he wanted, Ottawa now expected that great entomological discoveries would be forthcoming. The authorities were not disappointed. Within a year Strickland had shown that the eelworms were not to blame for the wilted and yellowing wheat. He recommended a crop rotation program in which farmers would not reseed wheat fields to wheat again the following year. He also noted a mite associated with the damaged growing grain, but was not sure it was the connective agent of the problem. The disease, if it was one, responded adversely to the recommended cultural control plan and in about two years had disappeared. Some forty years later the disease was rediscovered. It was named 'wheat streak mosaic,' vectored by a mite, and controlled by practices similar to those Strickland had recommended in 1913.25 And what of the pale western cutworm, the insect pest that was the cause of Strickland's appointment and his placement in the West? In three seasons of work, Strickland had invented a poison trap to lure and kill adult moths; had reared, studied, and therefore knew the number and types of parasites responsible for considerable larval mortality; and had developed a time-table, or 're-seeding chart,' that would indicate when fields could be safely resown to cereals. By 1916 he had found a reasonably good control for the army cutworm, Euxoa auxiliaris. This insect had suddenly appeared in outbreak numbers for the first time in 1915. In that year about 3000 square miles of farmland in southern Alberta was infested. Since it was a worm that travelled en masse, above the ground, Strickland surmised that a poisoned bait would be a good control. Being a very practical man, he did some experimentation with physical barriers, with furrows to trap the worms, and with various carriers of poison. His final recommendation was a remedy of remarkable simplicity. Worms could be controlled by placing poisoned baits, containing Paris green, shorts, and molasses, in furrows around fields. This would cost $1.20 per mile. An alternate bait consisting of Freshly pulled Stinkweed ( T. arvensis) or Alfalfa 50 lbs., Paris Green I lb. applied at the rate of 10 pounds to 40 or 50 rods, and costing exclusive of labour 15 or 20 cents per mile. The second bait is recommended wherever Stinkweed occurs since it is a noxious weed, and the benefit gained from pulling it pays for the labour that this involves. The freshly pulled plants are sprinkled with water and dusted with Paris Green, which is then stirred well into them. The bait is as attractive as the best Shorts mixtures. A count of dead worms in a furrow made one week after poisoning gave an average of 2,800,000 killed to the mile. 26

97 Western expansion: Hewitt, Criddle, and Strickland

Providing the means of stopping or reducing the ravages of three major field crop insect pests in a period of three years was an incredible accomplishment. Once more Hewitt had appointed the right man to get the job done. Now it was wartime, however. Strickland had been anxious to enter the British forces, and with few urgent demands being made by the insects of the West, he decided to enlist, and on 17 June 1916 the Lethbridge laboratory closed and work in entomology in Alberta came to a halt - temporarily. In 1914, there were only a handful of entomologists in western Canada to defend its growing agricultural industry, forestry, and human population from the effects of insects. On the federal scene, the Division of Entomology, still a part of the Experimental Farm System, had established three field stations each with one entomologist to perform the work: Treesbank, Manitoba - with Normal Criddle, whose concern was primarily field crop insects; Lethbridge, Alberta - with E.H. Strickland, also assigned to field crop insect investigations; Agassiz, British Columbia - with R.C. Treherne, involved with fruit, field crop, and garden insects. The four western provinces, by the end of 1913, did not boast of one provincial entomologist. The British Columbia Department of Agriculture had appointed W.H. Brittain as Entomologist and Plant Pathologist in April 1912, but by the fall of 1913 he had departed for Nova Scotia. There he had accepted a position in the Department of Biology, Truro Agricultural College. Of course, there was also the Honorary Provincial Entomologist, G.W. Taylor, so designated in 1895. But he had died of paralysis on 22 August 1912, leaving a void that was never filled. Nevertheless, it bears remarking that the western provinces did not officially appoint 'provincial entomologists' because they did not need them. Each province had dedicated, energetic, and highly talented and knowledgeable civil servants who were 'entomologists' in their own right and acted as such. There was Hugh McKellar, the Chief Clerk of the Manitoba Department of Agriculture, a 'keen enthusiast for the betterment of agriculture,' who was the departmental public relations officer, pest control specialist, and extension entomologist - all melded into one position. His dedicated service extended to 1904, when he resigned to seek his fortunes in the newspaper enterprise. His successors, the deputy ministers and field crop commissioners such as J.H. Evans and H.E. Wood, continued to exercise similar entomological interest in noxious insects and their control in Manitoba. Saskatchewan had T.N. Willing, expert botanist, weed inspector, and entomologist. He had been a farmer, as well as an avid collector of beetles, moths, and most other insects. Together with his superiors in the Department of Agriculture, and with advice from James Fletcher, and later from C.G. Hewitt, he took care of most of the pressing insect problems of the day in Saskatchewan.

98 The first professionals Alberta had its amateur entomologists - amateur with reference to academic training, but professional in terms of knowing the insects that surrounded them. There were Percy B. Gregson of Blackfalds, F.H. Wolley-Dod of Millarville, N.B. Sanson of Banff, all members of the Territorial Natural History Society. They were dedicated to the giving of aid to farmers by instructing them in the identification and control of noxious insects. British Columbia, with its cadre of officials in the provincial Department of Agriculture, was the envy of the nation. From the ministerial level down, these people were energetic, devoted, untiring, and knowledgeable, and made entomology their business and public service their motto. The names of J.R. Anderson, R.M. Palmer, and Thomas Cunningham will recur frequently. Mention should be made of two others who contributed to, and were part of, the entomological elite of 1914. Seymour Hadwen, the first assistant pathologist in the Dominion Veterinary Department of the Agassiz Experimental Farm, had studied ticks, warbles, mosquitoes, and other livestock insect pests since 1912. His were the first studies of insects that had veterinary-medical importance, and all who followed built on his founding work. Then there was Tom Wilson, the Dominion Inspector of Indian Orchards. He had been a provincial inspector of fruit pests, and, with the other trio of British Columbia officials, he had made his mark in keeping the province more pest-free than any other in the Dominion. Thus, at the end of the era of infancy, when the Dominion Division of Entomology was about to have its entomological umbilical cord severed from the Experimental Farm Division, western Canada could boast only five federal and five provincial entomologists, plus three or four 'professional amateurs.' These men had a rich heritage of excellent work to fall back on, but what of the future? Would insects seek new territories to infest? Would they increase in number, diversity and intensity of outbreaks? Could a dozen men thwart their efforts in the years immediately ahead?

PART III: INSECTS OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

E.R. Buckell

Eric Hearle

Professor G.J. Spencer

Dr G.P. Holland

A.B. Baird

H . Andison

Dr W .H. Brittain

James Marshall

Dominion Entomological Laboratory at Agassiz, 1914

Temporary laboratory at Mission, 1915

Inside the Mission laboratory, 1916

Summerland laboratory ca 1930

Temporary laboratory in a rented house at Victoria, 1920

Oil and plank barriers used to protect a crop from invasion by the strawberry root weevil, Victoria

The first airplane used for entomological purposes in Canada : a Vickers Vidette used by Eric Hearle for aerial reconnaissance of mosquito breeding grounds in the Lower Fraser valley in I 921

Tanglefoot and board barriers to halt the advance of strawberry root weevils, Victoria

A severe infestation of woolly aphids - and cloth patches used in control, Okanagan Centre

Hand dusting of crops in the Kootenays to control the Colorado potato beetle

Fumigating imported broom straw in a quarantine station

Mosquitoes emerging from Sumas prairie and resting on a fence post,

1920

7

British Columbia entomology

Insects of British Columbia had been collected, identified, and classified by numerous naturalists and collectors, above all by G.W. Taylor. However, it wasn't until 1892 that an attempt was made at economic entomology, to suppress or negate the harmful effects of noxious insects. In that year the British Columbia legislature enacted the Horticultural Board Act. This provided for the appointment of a competent entomologist to inspect nursery stock and to control insect pests in orchards. It meant that direct control of all insects within her borders could be exercised by the province. A quarantine and inspection service was started. Ernest Hutcherson was the first appointed entomologist to be Inspector of Fruit Pests under authority of the act. The need for legislation arose as a result of increased damage by insects to orchard crops. Fruit growing and horticulture generally had not spread uniformly over the province. The Lower Fraser valley, the Saanich Peninsula, and the Kamloops-Lytton district were the main regions where settlements had initiated fairly intensive agricultural development. The insect pests of small fruits, tree fruits, and vegetable crops were not taking a great toll of production initially, but progressive growers were aware of an increasing number of noxious insects and were prepared to do something to control them. The following account describes early attempts at spray control in the Vancouver area : In 1885 Mr. Thomas Cunningham bought a 45-gallon spray-pump from the Field Spray Pump Company of New York. Mr. William Clarkson, of New Westminster, also sprayed for aphis and apple-scab with a similar hand-pump of his own purchase in the So' s. In 1888 Mr. W.J . Brandrith, of Ladner, owned a 'stirrup' spray-pump. This was of cast iron with a wrought-iron plunger, and was only capable of throwing a spray some 12 feet or so. Mr. Brandrith in 1890 again arranged for the purchase and sale of six 5-gallon bucket Spramotor hand-pumps to various fruit-growers in the Lower Fraser Valley. These pumps cost, laid down, $30 each. In 1892 he again bought a No. 2 40-gallon Spramotor for his own use.

102 Insects of British Columbia Bordeaux was in use between the years 1885 and 1900 at the 4-4-50 formula and whaleoil soap, which later was imported from the Standard Soap Company of San Francisco, Cal., at the time. In the early 9o's Mr. T.A. Sharpe, Superintendant of the Dominion Experimental Farm, Agassiz, had a Spramotor hand-pump sent out from London, Ontario, for use on the Government Farm. As far as can be gathered, at least six more spray-pumps from the same firm came into the Fraser Valley and on to Vancouver Island about the same time. Mr. Tom Wilson, on his farm near Harrison, in the Fraser Valley, bought a Myers Spray-pump in 1892 and fitted it to a barrel. He says: 'The only thing we used to spray for was the green aphis, and we used tobacco-stems steeped in water. Previous to that we used a solution of concentrated lye or caustic soda applied with a swab or whitewash-brush to the bodies and larger limbs of the trees. About 1893 woolly aphis used sometimes to be noticed, and it was the practice to apply a little raw coal-oil to the affected parts with a swab. Oyster-shell scale, when treated at all, used to get a lick of lye and water. I remember seeing this scale in the woods in the early 9o's.' Records for the Okanagan District are limited. In 1895 one hand-power Bean sprayer was in use on the Coldstream Ranch, Vernon. With the exception of a brass Spraymotor No. 2, owned and bought by Mr. Price Ellison, M.L.A., later and at the present time (1914) Minister of Agriculture for the Province, it is doubtful whether any other existed in the Upper Country previous to this time, although conjointly in the Lower Mainland spraying fruittrees for fungi and insects was more or less general. Spraying, however, for insect pests did not become general all over the province in the fruit-growing areas until about 1900.'

Although these attempts at control were rewarding to those who used them, the total effort in the province was inadequate. J.R. Anderson of the British Columbia Department of Agriculture held that 'the influence that diseases and pests have on agriculture does not seem to be properly appreciated by our farmers, very little attempt being made in most cases to combat them by applying those remedies which are known to be best.' He considered the apple aphid and the oakworm to be the most serious of the insect pests.2 The official attitude taken by the provincial authorities was that insufficient attention was being given to insect pests. The same views were held by the British Columbia Fruit Growers Association, an organization that, since its formation in 1889, was intimately interested and involved in solving the insect problems of the fruit industry. It had pressed for stringent control measures and enforcement and had been largely responsible for the enactment of the Horticultural Board Act. Despite the legislation and the stepped-up control campaign in 1892-iJ3 the insect threat to crop production was not diminishing. Anderson reported :

103 British Columbia entomology

All throughout the province, I regret to say, there seems to have been a marked increase in some of these enemies of the agriculturist and stock-raiser ... The aphid, both on fruit trees and hops, has spread in all directions ... This [province) has always been considered and I think rightly, a fruit-growing country, but what can be thought when it is seen that 9,325 barrels of apples were imported last year. There seems to be something radically wrong in such a state of affairs. It is quite true that a very large proportion of the orchards of the province are young and not in bearing, but very many are in bearing; sufficient I imagine, to supply the wants of the province. The secret is, I believe, that diseases, pests, and want of care have so reduced the quantity and quality of fruit that people are forced to buy elsewhere.3 To further improve the defences against insects a revised Horticultural Board Act was passed in 1894. This permitted the Board to make specific regulations aimed not only at control but also at prevention. These regulations were made for the purpose of preventing the spread of contagious diseases in orchards and gardens and among fruit and fruit trees, and for the prevention, treatment, cure, and extirpation of fruit pests and the diseases of fruit and fruit trees, and for the disinfection of grafts, scions, and orchard debris, empty fruit boxes or packages, and other suspected material or transportable articles dangerous to orchards, fruit and fruit trees, said Board may make regulations for the inspection and disinfection or destruction thereof, or of non-fruit-bearing trees or shrubs which may carry contagion, and also for requiring all cases of contagious diseases, or fruit pests, as aforesaid, to be reported to the Board.4 The amended act was a milestone in the annals of applied entomology in Canada because of the added legal control procedures and measures it now sanctioned. The Inspector of Fruit Pests had the authority to inspect any material associated with the fruit industry, enter any farm, and cleanse or destroy all infested material. Furthermore, all measures under the act were also extended to hops and hop plants because these were threatened by the hop aphid. A further regulation named the 'woolly aphis, apple tree aphis, scaly bark-louse, oyster-shell bark-louse, San Jose Scale, red scale, borers, codlin [sic] moths, currant worms, or other known or injurious insects' 5 as species of particular concern. Although mentioned, the codling moth and the San Jose scale were not present in the province at that time. This specific inclusion must be regarded as a far-reaching and forward-planning decision. It resulted in a relatively pest-free province for agriculturists because it provided for a monitoring detection and early-warning service against the invasion of noxious insect pests. Rigid enforcement of the Horticultural Board Act - against the codling moth - Jed to some violent repercussions. Thomas Cunningham, one of the district fruit pest inspectors, turned back a carload of Ontario apples infested with the codling moth.

104 Insects of British Columbia

Such unilateral action had never been heard of before, and it had not been taken against 'good' eastern fruit in the past. The restriction of free interprovincial commerce was thought to be an infringement of the rights of other provinces, especially when the carrier, the Canadian Pacific Railway, incurred extra work and expense in shipping the apples back to Ontario. T.G. Shaughnessy, vice president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, sent a telegram to A.R. Angers, the federal Minister of Agriculture, on I November 1894. WE ARE ADVISED BY WIRE THIS MORNING THAT A CARLOAD OF APPLES FROM ONTARIO, CONSIGNED TO MCMILLAN & HAMILTON, VANCOUVER, HAS REACHED THAT POINT AND ON INSPECTION BY FRUIT INSPECTOR RECENTLY APPOINTED BY BRITISH COLUMBIA GOVERNMENT HE CONDEMNED THE FRUIT AS BEING INFESTED BY LARVAE OF CODLING MOTH, AND OWNERS HA VE BEEN INSTRUCTED TO EITHER SHIP CAR OUT OF COUNTRY OR DESTROY IT BY FIRE. THERE ARE ABOUT FIFTEEN OTHER CARLOADS OF APPLES ON THE WAY FROM ONTARIO FOR THE BRITISH COLUMBIA MARKET, WHICH MAY POSSIBLY BE CONDEMNED IN THE SAME WAY. THIS PROVINCIAL INSPECTION ACT APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN SPRUNG ON THE TRADE IN BRITISH COLUMBIA WITHOUT NOTICE, AND WILL WORK A GREAT HARDSHIP NOT ONLY ON THEM BUT ON ONTARIO FRUIT GROWERS WHO WOULD HAVE HAD AN EXCELLENT MARKET IN BRITISH COLUMBIA THIS YEAR ON ACCOUNT OF THE FAILURE OF THE OREGON FRUIT CROP. CANNOT YOUR DEPARTMENT DO SOMETHING TO PUT MATTERS RIGHT? ANSWER 6

The Minister of Agriculture immediately sought a ruling as to whether the act was valid or not. He consulted James Fletcher, who advised him that the contaminated apples could be easily spotted and destroyed. J .R. Anderson affirmed that 'The Board used every means in its power to acquaint the public with the provisions of the Act, and its determination to enforce them. Besides advertising in the Official Gazette and the public papers ... forms were sent to every public officer, postmaster, and fruit dealer throughout the Province, with copies of the Act ... ignorance of the Act !could not) be advanced as an excuse.' 7 The British Columbia inspectors found the apples from Ontario to be terribly affected with the same species of insect, and by 15 November 1894 had refused the entry of eight more carloads into the province. Furthermore, a 'large quantity of Oregon, Washington, and California fruit has also been condemned and destroyed, principally on account of the codling moth and San Jose scale, and as a consequence we are now getting clean fruit from these States.' 8 In spite of the opinion of the Department of Justice that the act did not give the inspectors the right to stop entry, or destroy carloads of applies, the province

105 British Columbia entomology

adamantly refused to back down from the stand it had taken. It insisted that eastern Canadian fruit be clean and free from insects, even though ' Eastern papers are sharply criticising us for enforcing the law, and are loudly proclaiming that Canadian apples are not infected ... Had the Government of the older Provinces taken similar precautions by the enactment of wholesome laws for the protection of orchards, Canadian apples would not be selling in the markets of Great Britain at the ruinous price of ten shillings per barrel.' 9 To ensure further legality of action the British Columbia legislature passed further amendments, on 21 February 1895 . These gave the board 'the power to make regulations for inspection [which) shall include the power to establish and vary places and quarantine stations where such inspection shall be carried out, and to make regulations in regard to the forwarding thereto and detention thereat of articles requiring inspection.' Furthermore, it authorized the Inspector of Fruit Pests to 'order the destruction, by rooting out and burning, all infected nursery stock, trees ... considered expedient in the interests of the fruit-growing industry." 0 In spite of the howlings of eastern Canadian fruit growers and politicians, the quarantine and inspection measures remained in effect. As evidence of the appreciation of the quarantine efforts of the Board of Horticulture, the North-west Fruit Growers' Association endorsed a resolution praising the British Columbia actions at their meeting in Portland, Oregon, on 6-8 February 1895. Only diligent and dedicated surveillance by men such as J.R. Anderson, E.C. Gibson, R.M. Palmer, T. Cunningham, and T . Wilson, kept British Columbia free of injurious foreign insects for many years. The fruit industry was expanding rapidly. To safeguard it from the introduction of unwanted insects to add to the company of noxious ones already in the province, an inspection station was built in Vancouver in 1895 . It was 'to be used for the inspection of all fruit-trees and vegetation that were passing into the Province from points outside.' The prompt and strict enforcement of the regulations by R.M. Palmer and his staff did much to reduce the incidence of fruit pests in the province. Furthermore, the dedicated attention given to insects by Palmer and Anderson was also partly responsible for further quarantine action taken by the Horticultural Society and the British Columbia Fruit Growers Association. A committee was appointed to formulate a set of instructions and recommendations for the control of various insect pests of fruit. This was done and the 'Pest and Remedy Supplement' was issued to fruit growers as a comprehensive guide for better insect control in orchards. 11 The informative leaflet issued in 1895 to the growers became a veritable 'bible' for successful fruit growing, and was the fore-runner of the 'Spray Calendar' that is up-dated and revised annually and is still in use today. In 1896, the Department of Agriculture, through J.R. Anderson, added fumigation to its quarantine procedures. Thomas Cunningham was placed in charge of this

106 Insects of British Columbia work. He, together with Palmer and Anderson, became an unbeatable team in the fight against insects. To all these men, 'the enforcement of import regulations, fumigation of nursery stock, and eradication of incipient outbreaks are claimed to have delayed the establishment of many fruit pests, including the codling moth and the San Jose Scale." 2 The entomologists and agriculturists were also emphatic in recommending debris control, crop rotation, orchard sanitation and improvement, and biological control. Aphids (green, black, and woolly) and the scales (oystershell, Putnams, red, and apple tree) ha