RILEY, Charles Valentine, entomologist, born in London, England, 18 September, 1843. He attended schools at Chelsea and Bayswater until he was eleven years old, was then sent to the College of St. Paul in Dieppe, France, and three years later went to Bonn, Germany. In 1860 he came to the United States and settled on a farm in Illinois, where he acquired a practical knowledge of agriculture. Subsequently he became editorially connected with the "' Evening Journal" and the "Prairie Farmer" in Chicago. He relinquished these appointments in May, 1864, to serve with the 134th Illinois volunteers: and when his regiment was disbanded, toward the close of the war, he resumed his connection with the "Prairie Farmer." In 1868 he accepted the office of state entomologist of Missouri, which he held until 1877, and then he was appointed chief of the United States entomological commission that had beryl formed under the auspices of the department of the interior for the purpose of investigating the Rocky mountain locust. He was made entomologist, to the department of agriculture in 1878, but soon gave up this office and returned to his work in the entomological commission. for which he edited and wrote the more important original and practical portions of its four large reports (1877-'86). In 1881 he organized the entomological division of the department of agriculture, to which the work of the commission was transferred, and he has since continued in charge of that division, also holding the office of curator of insects in the United States national museum, to which he presented his private entomological collection of more than 115,000 mounted specimens, including about 15,000 species. This is now the largest general collection in the United States. He has lectured on entomology at Cornell university, Kansas state agricultural college, Washington university, and Missouri state university, which institution conferred on him, in 1873, the honorary degree of Ph. D. Professor Riley's great services to the community have been accomplished by his valuable researches on the insects most injurious to American agriculture, including the Rocky mountain locust, the army worm, the chinch-bug, the cankerworm, the cotton-worm, the potato-beetle, and the phylloxera, His researches on the latter attracted the attention of the French authorities, and in 1873 he was presented by that government with a gold medal that was designed for the occasion. In 1884 he received a gold medal for a collection of insects that he made at the International forestry exhibition in Edinburgh. He is a member of many scientific societies in the United States and abroad, was general secretary of the American association for the advancement of science in 1881, and vice-president of the section of biology in 1888, president of the St. Louis academy of sciences in 1876-'8, and first president of the Entomological society of Washington in 1883. In 1878, with Benjamin D. Walsh, he founded " The American Entomologist," but it was discontinued at the end of its second volume. It was resumed in 1880, but given up again at the close of the volume. Professor Riley has contributed largely to the press and to eyclopaedias. The titles of his separate papers are about 200 in number, and he has published in book-form "Reports on the Noxious, Beneficial, and other Insects of the State of Missouri" (9 annual volumes, Jefferson City, 1869-'77) ; "Potato Pests " (New York, 1876); '"The Locust Plague in the United States" (Chicago, 1877) ; and "Annual Reports as Entomologist of the Department of Agriculture "; also a number of bulletins from the entomological division (Washington, 1881 et seq.).