‘He also enjoyed for several years the close friendship of B. D. Walsh, one of our most thorough and philosophic entomologists, with whom he edited the “American Entomologist.” His industry and versatility, as well as his zeal as an entomologist, made him widely known and popular, and gave him such prestige that it resulted in his appointment in 1868 as State Entomologist of Missouri. From that time until 1877, when he left St. Louis to live in Washington, he issued a series of nine annual reports on injurious insects, which showed remarkable powers of observation both of structure and habits, great skill in drawing, and especially ingenious and thoroughly practical devices and means of destroying the pests. It goes without saying that this prestige existed to the end of his life, his practical applications of remedies and inventions of apparatus giving him a world-wide reputation. In token of his suggestion of reviving the vines injured by the Phylloxera by the importation of the American stock, he received a gold medal from the French Government, and he afterwards received the Cross of the Légion d’Honneur in connection with the exhibit of the U. S. Department of Agriculture at the Paris Exposition of 1880.
‘The widespread ravages of the Rocky Mountain locust from 1873 to 1877 had occasioned such immense loss in several States and Territories that national aid was invoked to avert the evil. The late Dr. F. V. Hayden, then in charge of the U. S. Geographical and Geological Survey of the Territories, sent Dr. P. R. Uhler to Colorado in the summer of 1875. Mr. Walsh had made important suggestions as to the birthplace and migrations of the insect. Meanwhile Riley had since 1874 made very detailed studies on the migration and breeding habits and means of destruction of this locust. Dr. Cyrus Thomas had also been attached to Hayden’s Survey, and published a monograph on the locust family, Acrididæ. As the result of this combined work Congress created the United States Entomological Commission, attaching to it Dr. Hayden’s Survey, and the Secretary of the Interior appointed Charles V. Riley, A. S. Packard, and Cyrus Thomas members of the Commission. Dr. Riley was appointed chief, and it was mainly owing to his executive ability, business sagacity, experience in official life, together with his scientific knowledge and practical inventive turn of mind in devising remedies, or selecting those invented by others, that the work of the Commission was so popular and successful during the five years of its existence. In 1878, while the Report of the Commission was being printed, Riley accepted the position of Entomologist to the U. S. Department of Agriculture, but owing to the lack of harmony in the Department, he resigned, Professor J. H. Comstock being appointed. Congress meanwhile transferred the cotton-worm investigation [on which Riley had been engaged] to the Entomological Commission. Dr. Riley was reappointed to the position of U. S. Entomologist in June, 1881. Mr. L. O. Howard said of the administration of this office: “The present efficient organisation of the Division of Entomology was his own original conception, and he is responsible for its plan down to the smallest detail. It is unquestionably the foremost organisation of its kind at present in existence.” Again he writes: “Professor Riley’s work in the organisation of the Division of Entomology has unquestionably advanced the entire Department of which it is a part, for it is generally conceded that this Division has led in most matters where efficiency, discipline, and system were needed.”
‘His Division published the first bulletin, and in “Insect Life” began the system of periodical bulletins, which has since been adopted for the other Divisions of the Agricultural Department. In an address, says Howard, before the National Agricultural Congress, delivered in 1879, in which he outlined the ideal Department of Agriculture, Professor Riley foreshadowed many important reforms which have since become accomplished facts, and suggested the important legislation, since brought about, of the establishment of State Experiment Stations under the general government.
‘His practical, inventive genius was exhibited in his various means of exterminating locusts, in the use of kerosene oil emulsified with milk or soap, and in his invention and perfection of the “cyclone” or “eddy-chamber” or Riley systems of nozzles, which, in one form or another, are now in general use in the spraying of insecticide or fungicide liquids.
‘Although the idea of introducing foreign insect parasites or carnivorous enemies of our imported pests had been suggested by others, Riley, with the resources of his division at hand, accomplished more than any one else in making it a success. He it was who succeeded in introducing the Australian lady-bird to fight the fluted scale.
‘Riley’s scientific writings will always stand, and show as honest work. He was not “a species man” or systematist as such; on the contrary, his most important work was on the transformations and habits of insects, such as those of the lepidoptera, locusts and their parasites, his Missouri reports being packed with facts new to science. His studies on the systematic relations of Platypsyllus as determined by the larva evince his patience, accuracy, and keenness in observation and his philosophic breadth.
‘His best anatomical and morphological work is displayed in his study on the mode of pupation of butterflies, the research being a difficult one, and especially related to the origin of the cremaster, and of the vestigial structures, sexual and others, of the end of the pupa. Whatever he did in entomology was original. He was also much interested in Aëronautics, and took much delight in attending séances of spiritualists and exposing their frauds, in one case, at least, where another biologist of world-wide fame, then visiting in Washington, was completely deluded.
‘Riley was from the first a pronounced evolutionist. His philosophic breadth and his thoughtful nature and grasp of the higher truths of biology are well brought out in his address on “The Causes of Variation in Organic Forms,” as Vice-President, before the biological section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1888. He was a moderate Darwinian, and leaned, like other American naturalists, rather to Neo-Lamarckism. He says: “I have always had a feeling, and it grows on me with increasing experience, that the weak features of Darwinism and, hence, of natural selection, are his insistence (1) on the necessity of slight modification; (2) on the length of time required for the accumulation of modifications, and (3) on the absolute utility of the modified structure.” Riley, from his extended experience as a biologist, was led to ascribe much influence to the agency of external conditions, remarking, in his address: “Indeed, no one can well study organic life, especially in its lower manifestations, without being impressed with the great power of the environment.” He thus contrasts Darwinism and Lamarckism: “Darwinism assumes essential ignorance of the causes of variation and is based on the inherent tendency thereto in the offspring. Lamarckism, on the contrary, recognizes in use and disuse, desire and the physical environment, immediate causes of variation affecting the individual and transmitted to the offspring, in which it may be intensified again both by inheritance and further individual modification.”’
‘“Evolution shows that man is governed by the same laws as other animals.” “Evolution reveals a past which disarms doubt and leaves the future open with promise—unceasing purpose—progress from lower to higher. It promises higher and higher intellectual and ethical attainment, both for the individual and the race. It shows the power of God in what is universal, not in the specific; in the laws of nature, not in departure from them.”’