┬PARA ║PAR@ ` ΓTEXT ` ╘Comstock, Anna Botsford1854╨1930naturalist, illustrator and college professorBorn near Otto, Cattaraugus County, New York, on September 1, 1854, Anna Botsford attended schools in her native town and the Chamberlain Institute and Female College in nearby Randolph. After a year of teaching school in Otto she entered Cornell University in 1874, but she left after two years. In October 1878 she married John Henry Comstock, a young entomologist on the Cornell faculty from whom she had taken an interest in insect illustration. Throughout their marriage she functioned as his assistant, usually informally but in 1879╨1881, when he was chief entomologist in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with a formal appointment. There she prepared the drawings for his Report of the Entomologist (on citrus scale insects) of 1880. After their return from Washington, D.C., to Ithaca, New York, she reentered Cornell and took her degree in natural history in 1885. She studied wood engraving at Cooper Union, New York City, in order to prepare illustrations for her husband╒s Introduction to Entomology, 1888. In 1888 she was one of the first four women admitted to Sigma Xi, national honor society for the sciences. Anna Comstock made engravings for the more than 600 plates in Professor Comstock╒s Manual for the Study of Insects, 1895, and for Insect Life, 1897, and How to Know the Butterflies, 1904, both of which she helped write as well. Her engravings were also widely exhibited in major expositions and won several prizes. Books written and illustrated by herself included Ways of the Six-Footed, 1903, How to Keep Bees, 1905, Confessions to a Heathen Idol, a novel, 1906, The Handbook of Nature Study, which went through more than two dozen editions, 1911, The Pet Book, 1914, and Trees at Leisure, 1916. In 1895 she was appointed to the New York State Committee for the Promotion of Agriculture, under whose auspices she planned and conducted an experimental course of nature study for public schools. When the program was approved for statewide use through the extension service of Cornell she wrote and spoke in its behalf, helped train teachers, and prepared classroom materials, and in 1897 she was appointed an assistant in nature study at Cornell. In 1899 she advanced to assistant professor, the first woman to hold that rank at Cornell; in 1900 she reverted to lecturer, but in 1913 she was again appointed assistant professor and in 1920 she was promoted to professor. Comstock lectured frequently to teachers╒ and farmers╒ institutes and at universities as far from home as Stanford. She was a contributing editor of Nature-Study Review in 1905╨1917 and editor in 1917╨1923 and was on the staff of Country Life in America. In 1922 she retired from Cornell as professor emeritus, but she continued to teach in the summer session. In 1923 she was chosen one of the twelve greatest living American women in a poll by the League of Women Voters. She died in Ithaca, New York, on August 24, 1930. ╢styl ` " ! ¬ 5¬ " 5¬ Q !I !I !I 4 !I N !I ─ 5¬ ┼ !I !I 7 !I G !I R !I ^ !I y !I 4 !I J !I R !I b !I j !I ç !I ÿ !I ┤ !I φ !I ∙ !I !I !I ├ 5¬ ─ !I
