Historical Note
Robert Evans Snodgrass (1875-1962) began teaching at the State College of Washington at Pullman following his graduation from Stanford University. After losing this appointment and a brief stay at Stanford, he became an artist and sculptor in San Francisco. His wandering years that followed included a few years with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (beginning in 1906), a trip to England, a few years as a freelance artist and cartoonist in New York, a venture selling paintings to farmers in Indiana, a two-year period of entomological work in Indiana, and finally a return to Washington and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. His writing was prolific; beginning in 1896 he wrote and published eighteen papers including four full-sized books. His works included the following topics: 1896, mouth parts of bird lice; 1903-1909, four papers on insect anatomy; 1910, 1925, 1941, and 1946, anatomy of the honey bee; 1917, insects of Indiana; 1921, the 17-year cicada; 1924, anatomy and metamorphosis of the apple maggot; 1927-1937, a series of eight papers on the morphology of insects; 1931, 1933, 1935, and 1936, papers on the morphology of the insect abdomen; 1937, genitalia of male insects; 1938, evolution of the Annelida, Onycophora, and Anthropoda; 1941, male genitalia of the Hymenoptera; 1942, skeletal mechanism and musculature of the honey bee; 1946, skeletal anatomy of fleas; 1948, feeding apparatus of the Arachnida; 1952, a textbook of arthropod anatomy; 1953, metamorphosis of the fly's head; 1956, metamorphosis of the Crustacea; 1959, anatomical life of the mosquito; and in 1961, works on the caterpillar and butterfly, and one on insect metamorphosis. His two great books, Insects, Their Ways and Means of Living and Principles of Insect Morphology were published in 1930 and 1935, respectively. Snodgrass also revised several earlier works.
