Locust (20 page)

Perhaps the entomologists’ most lasting legacy was their advocacy of a strategically diversified agriculture. They realized that although
the locust was omnivorous, not all plants were equally susceptible. There was no equivalent of the American grape rootstock’s resistance to phylloxera, but Riley knew that evolutionary pressures would surely have caused some plants to be more tolerant of the locust than others. The commission catalogued reports of damage from dozens of farmers to piece together a set of recommendations for which crops to plant. Mixed plantings of peas, beans, sorghum, broom corn, tomatoes, and sweet potatoes were recommended as viable alternatives to other far more susceptible vegetables and cereals. If a farmer insisted on planting wheat, then the entomologists advised using one of the bearded varieties that seemed more resistant. The commission even suggested planting a strip of timothy—one of the locust’s most favored foods—around fields of corn or wheat; the grass served as a trap crop that could be treated with a poison once the locusts were concentrated in the strip. Riley also encouraged a program of tree planting across the Midwest, as he believed that the natural barrier of forested lands kept the locusts from moving beyond the Mississippi and that this ecological Maginot Line could be extended to the west. Finally, the possibility of large-scale, strategically located fallows was seriously considered as a means of starving the hatchlings. However, the imposition of such crop-free zones never materialized as no government had the courage to order farmers not to plant after they’d already been decimated by the swarms.

By far, the strangest approach to locust management was Riley’s recommendation to simply eat the insects. Nearly five pages of the commission’s first report were devoted to an argument for consuming locusts. Although Packard cracked the door to entomophagy in suggesting in his previous writings that humans had delighted in consuming other arthropods (lobster, crab, and shrimp all being considered delicacies), Riley shoved the door open in enthusiastically advocating the culinary uses of locusts. Although his early experiments were not terribly encouraging, he stuck with it:

Not only did he prepare them himself, but he also enticed chefs to explore the possibilities: “I sent a bushel of the scalded insects to Mr. John Bonnet, one of the oldest and best known caterers in Saint Louis. Master of the mysteries of the cuisine, he made a soup which was really delicious, and was so pronounced by dozens of prominent Saint Louisians who tried it.” To affirm that the palatability of locusts was not the consequence of an uncultured palate, Riley took fried specimens to France and England, where “they were tasted and reported better than expected.” Faint praise, perhaps, but to Riley a ringing endorsement.

As odd as it was to suggest that locusts should be converted into delicacies, the notion did not seem to undermine Riley’s credibility. He took pains to explain that this venture was neither fancy nor folly, but a pragmatic approach to human suffering. Acknowledging that his efforts to test the locust for edibility and to develop simple recipes would provoke “ridicule and mirth, or even disgust,” Riley pushed ahead, contending, “Yet I was governed by weightier reasons than mere curiosity; for many a family in Kansas and Nebraska was in 1874 brought to the brink of the grave by sheer lack of food, while the St. Louis papers reported cases of actual death from starvation in some sections of Missouri, where the insects abounded and ate up every green thing in the spring of 1875.” Knowing the cultural obstacles to eating locusts, Riley still maintained that if his analyses allowed even a few people to avoid suffering and starvation, then “I shall not have written in vain.”

Unfortunately (at least for those hoping to demonstrate the power of science as a means of altering the course of nature on a continental scale) the Rocky Mountain locust plague began to subside a year after the commission started its work. Given Riley’s enormous capacity for self-promotion and the extraordinary contributions that the commission had made to developing scientifically sound management methods, the politicians and the public were delighted to attribute the locust’s
demise to the work of the entomologists. Riley might have fiercely rebutted the logical fallacy that attributed droughts to prairie fires, but he wasn’t about to suggest that there was any error in linking the existence of his commission and the adoption of their methods to the precipitous decline in the locust’s populations. To be fair, short-term regional applications of the commission’s recommended methods had proven enormously effective and remarkably efficient, and had the outbreak persisted it may well have been defeated by the integrated tactics the entomologists recommended.

Perhaps most important, even these preliminary results of scientific pest management were widely seen as being entirely sufficient to establish the efficacy of applied research in solving grave national problems. The country’s grand experiment in publicly funded science was declared a rip-roaring success. And so, with the insects in retreat and his reputation soaring, Riley made his move.

 

Riley had laid the foundation for a power grab in Washington in his reports as the Missouri state entomologist and echoed these sentiments in his role as chief of the commission. Using a carrot-and-stick approach to political lobbying, Riley first stroked the egos of any politician who had the foresight to appreciate the coming revolution in entomology:

With governments around the world seeing the light, surely the U.S. Congress—or at least its wisest members—would understand the incredible value of finally winning the war against one of humanity’s
most ancient and formidable enemies. But, a sympathetic senator or representative might argue, “Don’t we already have a Department of Agriculture and isn’t this agency taking the lead in ensuring that modern practices are being developed?” Riley anticipated such a rejoinder and was loaded for bear:

When Townsend Glover, the USDA’s inept entomological head, fell ill in 1878, Riley was poised for ascendancy. In June, he was appointed chief entomologist to the USDA, a position that would allow him to alter the course of economic entomology. His fellow entomologists had rather less ambitious goals. With the locusts in recession and the commission’s work on the crisis dwindling, the other two entomologists pursued paths as divergent as their personalities.

Packard was appointed professor of zoology at Brown University, where he continued a long and distinguished academic career. He was one of the first entomologists to realize that there were more orders of insects than those described by Linnaeus a century earlier, and Packard substantially improved the taxonomy of insects. He expanded his research to include studies of a wide range of other invertebrates, describing fifty new genera and nearly 600 new species of insects, spiders, crustaceans, and mollusks throughout his career. This immense body of work was recognized by his being named to the National Academy of Sciences. In his later years, he turned his attention to more philosophical and theoretical aspects of zoology. Despite the growing acceptance of Darwin’s concepts, Packard remained loyal to the Lamarckian theory of evolution. Following a visit to France, Packard wrote an authoritative biography of Lamarck, a tribute to his lifelong fascination with this French naturalist. This was to be his last substantive work, as he fell ill and died at the age of sixty-six.

Thomas returned to his faculty position in natural history at Southern Normal University and his work as state entomologist. But as he was a classical nineteenth-century natural scientist, Thomas’s interests were eclectic and he was increasingly fascinated by anthropology. And so, at the age of fifty-seven, he resigned from his state duties to join the Smithsonian Institution. Working with the Bureau of Ethnology he became a renowned authority on archaeology and an expert on Mayan inscriptions, the mound builders in the Mississippi Valley and Gulf states, and the Cherokee and Shawnee people. Having served as the president of the Bureau of American Ethnology and published such seminal books as
Introduction to the Study of North American Archaeology
, Thomas is now remembered more for his anthropological than for his entomological studies. He died at the age of eighty-five, having enjoyed a rich and varied life practicing law, ministry, and science.

 

After the triumvirate disbanded, one of Riley’s first acts revealed the compassionate side of this otherwise megalomaniacal figure. Although Riley seemed to have nothing but contempt for his predecessor, he took pains to ensure that Glover was fairly compensated by the House Committee for Agriculture for the meticulously rendered copper plates that he had produced on his own. One might posit that Riley’s recent marriage had soothed his restless spirit. Or perhaps the serene setting of his new workplace calmed his nerves. The lily pond just inside the entrance to the grounds, rows of elegant ginkgoes bordering the main drive, and the surrounding park of rolling lawns punctuated with groves of trees in neat, botanical groupings should have put him at ease. But Riley had the passionate heart of an artist to go along with the rational mind of a scientist, and it was not long before he was once again mired in controversy.

Riley’s assistant and the man who would one day succeed him, Leland O. Howard, described his chief as “a restless, ambitious man, a great schemer, and striving constantly to make his work appear more important.” As was the normal practice of the time, Riley’s name appeared as the author of many bulletins and reports that were entirely written by his assistants. As Howard noted, “This was considered quite ethical, in fact, the proper thing to do. The assistants accepted the situation,
not because it was right, but because there was nothing they could do about it.” Howard was close enough to Riley to infer that some of his irascibility might be physiological, as well as psychological. While living in Washington, Riley often suffered from headaches and insomnia. After he discovered that he could sleep in a barber’s chair better than a bed, on restless nights he’d go to his barber and pay by the hour to sleep. For all of his pragmatism in the field of entomology, Riley apparently never thought of simply putting such a chair in his house.

Outside of work—a world of intense striving and fierce competition, largely of his own creation—Riley was a different man. He was a loving and tender father to seven children, although his role was limited by poor health and excessive work. In public he could be absolutely charming, “discussing almost any topic with versatility and good humor.” In Washington social circles, he was usually a genial guest, full of grace and wit. But even in polite society Riley could be cantankerous when matters of science became even peripherally involved. When he was invited to a seance, a popular diversion in the late 1800s, Riley nearly put an end to the evening by irritably voicing his disbelief in the proceedings. His host warned that such acrimonious skepticism could hinder the appearance of the sensitive spirit, but Riley was undeterred in his expostulation about the evening as senseless tripe.

Whereas flamboyance could be a delightful quality in a dinner guest, the staid Department of Agriculture had little tolerance of showboating. Riley’s success in making direct appeals to Congress during the formation of the Entomological Commission convinced him that direct lobbying was a viable tactic, a singularly appalling approach within the chain-of-command structure of the USDA. The department was headed by William G. LeDuc, a Civil War general who was constantly irritated by his insubordinate chief entomologist—and by the shenanigans of his staff. The department head enjoyed giving tours to important visitors and especially liked taking his guests to a box of pinned specimens of the Rocky Mountain locust, the creature of greatest intrigue and interest to high-ranking officials. LeDuc would make a beeline to this one box, whose location he knew, read the Latin name aloud for his visitors, open the box with a flourish, and show the contents with the portentous pride of a learned expert.
Just prior to such a tour, one of Riley’s assistants—encouraged by his boss’s defiance of authority—altered the position of the boxes as a practical joke, leaving LeDuc confused and embarrassed.

Throughout his seventeen years with the USDA, Riley was constantly in hot water because of his impatience with bureaucratic bungling and his intolerance of inefficiency. He resented administrative constraints on his program, which led to his resigning twice. The first time came after an elaborate scheme to secure his appointment as Assistant Secretary of Agriculture failed and Riley became so embittered that he was “allowed to resign.” After a change of administrations Riley was reappointed to his position as Chief Entomologist. However, he resigned in a “fit of temper” some years later over accusations that he had violated travel restrictions and deceived his superiors. Such conflicts surely exacerbated his bouts of “nervous exhaustion,” which frustrated him terribly. But despite these difficulties—or one might argue that, in part, because of the rabid intensity that led to them—Riley was able to create a legacy of economic entomology that continues to define this field.