# Dyar, Harrison Gray, Jr.

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-21 — 1 clipping.*

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Pamela M. Henson, Dyar, Harrison Gray, Jr., bahai-library.com.
> ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
> 
> Dyar, Harrison Gray, Jr.
> 
> Pamela M. Henson
> 
> 2005
> 
> Dyar, Harrison Gray, Jr. (14 Feb. 1866-21 Jan. 1929), entomologist, was
> born in New York City, the son of Harrison Gray Dyar and Eleonora
> Rosella Hannum. His father was a chemist and inventor who disputed
> Samuel F. B. Morse's priority in developing the telegraph and earned a
> small fortune from proceeds of patents for dyes. He died when his son
> was nine. The young Dyar attended the Roxbury Latin School and received
> a B.S. in chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1889.
> Shortly after graduation, he married Zella Peabody of Los Angeles, a
> music teacher; they had two children. In the same year Dyar published
> his first scientific paper, a description of the life history of the
> limacodid moth. (He had begun to study insects as a boy, starting his
> "blue books" of observations when he was sixteen.) He pursued graduate
> studies in biology at Columbia, receiving the A.M. in 1894 for his
> thesis on the classification of Lepidoptera and the Ph.D. in 1895 for a
> study of airborne bacteria.
> 
> Dyar began his career as assistant bacteriologist at the College of
> Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, from 1895 to 1897. In 1897
> he moved to Washington, D.C., to take up his life's work, the study of
> entomology at the United States National Museum. Appointed Honorary
> Custodian of Lepidoptera, he worked without salary. He held real state
> and other investments, including an upperclass apartment complex. The
> Dyar family summered at Stony Man Camp near Luray, Virginia. Dyar helped
> finance this park during its early years of development by George
> Freeman Pollock; it eventually became Shenandoah National Park.
> 
> At the National Museum, Dyar devoted his energies to increasing,
> consolidating, and systematically arranging the Lepidoptera collection.
> He first became noted, however, as an expert on mosquitoes. While the
> Panama Canal was under construction in the early 1900s, mosquitoes were
> of great interest because of their recently discovered role as a disease
> vector. With Leland Ossian Howard and Frederic Knab, Dyar coauthored the
> landmark four-volume Mosquitoes of North and Central America and the
> West Indies (1912-1917). He published 207 papers on mosquitoes,
> including his classic revision of mosquito classification, Mosquitoes of
> the Americas (1928). In 1924 he was named a captain in the Sanitary
> Department, Officers Reserve Corps, based on his mosquito work.
> 
> Dyar also continued research on the evolutionary classification of North
> American Limacodidae. He was noted for studies of larval stages of
> macro- and microlepidoptera, especially slug caterpillars, and for his
> innovative comparisons of adult and larval characters. Dyar's law of
> geometric growth, based on studies of the geometric progression in head
> capsule widths, became a standard tool for studying immature insects. He
> described hundreds of species and genera, revised several families of
> Lepidoptera, and brought new, more precise standards to larval
> descriptions, higher classification, and life histories.
> 
> From 1904 to 1907 Dyar was editor of the Journal of the New York
> Entomological Society, and from 1909 to 1912 he edited The Proceedings
> of the Entomological Society of Washington. From 1913 to 1926 he
> published Insecutor Inscitiae Menstruus. Noted for his strong opinions
> in taxonomic matters, he engaged in legendary debates with John B. Smith
> and Henry Skinner, among others. Because of Dyar's contributions to the
> national collection of Lepidoptera, Leland Ossian Howard, chief of the
> Bureau of Entomology, U.S. Department of Agriculture, appointed him a
> salaried "expert" around 1910.
> 
> Midway through his career, Dyar encountered problems in his personal
> life that had serious effects on his professional life. His marriage to
> Zella Peabody ended in 1915 amid charges of bigamy, and he was dismissed
> from the USDA for conduct unbecoming a government employee. It became
> known that in 1906 Dyar, using the alias Wilfred Allen, had married
> Wellesca Pollock, an educator and ardent disciple of the Bahá'í faith.
> They had three sons, whom Dyar legally adopted after he and Allen
> married legally in 1921. He became active in the Bahá'í faith, a
> movement that accepts the divine inspiration of all religions and seeks
> to reconcile science with religion. Dyar edited Reality, an independent
> Bahá'í journal, from 1922 until his death, but his unorthodox opinions,
> voiced in the magazine, were rejected by mainstream Bahá'ís. In Reality
> Dyar published a fascinating series of short stories replaying central
> themes in his life--including bigamy.
> 
> During the 1920s Dyar's most peculiar hobby came to light. When a truck
> fell into a labyrinth of tunnels near Dyar's old home in 1924, newspaper
> speculation attributed these to World War I spy nests, Civil War trysts,
> and mad scientists. Eventually Dyar accepted responsibility for the
> tunnels and similar works behind his new home, saying he found
> relaxation in digging underground. The brick-walled tunnels extended for
> hundreds of feet and measured six by six feet. (See article offsite Hidden tunnels, bugs, and bigamy.)
> 
> Dyar continued to work at the National Museum as an honorary curator
> after his dismissal from the USDA. He was not a successful businessman
> and spent much of his inheritance on legal cases and on his interests in
> entomology and the Bahá'í faith; thus by the end of his life he found
> himself in straitened financial circumstances. In 1928 he appealed to
> the USDA for reinstatement and was awaiting his appointment when he
> suffered a stroke at his desk. He died two days later at Garfield
> Hospital in Washington, D.C.
> 
> One of the most colorful figures in turn-of-the-century entomology, Dyar
> was notorious for his lively debates with colleagues and his acerbic
> personal style, as well as for his Bahá'í faith, two marriages, and
> tunnel-digging. He was equally known, however, for his contributions to
> the evolutionary classifications of insects and for his warm friendships
> with colleagues such as Leland Ossian Howard, Frederic Knab, and Andrew
> Caudell.
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Bibliography
> 
> The Harrison Gray Dyar Papers are located in the Smithsonian Institution
> Archives, along with the Records of the Division of Insects of the
> United States National Museum and the papers of many of Dyar's
> colleagues. The Bureau of Entomology Records at the National Archives
> and Records Administration contain rich correspondence between Dyar and
> his colleagues, especially his supervisor, Leland Ossian Howard. Marc E.
> Epstein and Pamela M. Henson, "Digging for Dyar: The Man behind the
> Myth," American Entomologist 38 (Fall 1992): 148-69, is an overview of
> his life and career. Arnold Mallis, American Entomologists (1971),
> includes a profile of Dyar. Leland Ossian Howard's Fighting the Insects:
> The Story of an Entomologist (1933) captures the environment at the
> Bureau of Entomology during Dyar's tenure. For information on the Dyar
> family, see Harrison Gray Dyar, Jr., A Preliminary Genealogy of the Dyar
> Family (1903). Dyar's mosquito research is summarized in K. L. Knight
> and R. B. Pugh, "A Bibliography of the Mosquito Writings of H. G. Dyar
> and Frederic Knab," Mosquito Systematics 6 (1974): 1-26. Obituaries are
> in the Washington Post, 23 Jan. 1929; the New York Times, 22 Jan. 1929;
> Leland Ossian Howard, "Harrison Gray Dyar," Science 69 (8 Feb. 1929):
> 151; W. T. M. Forbes and John M. Aldrich, Entomological News 40 (1929):
> 165-68; and L. Robinson, "Our Editor," Reality 17 (Feb. 1929): 4-5.
> 
> More links and notes (by Rob Stauffer, 2011)
> 
> The research was first posted at thelocation.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/hidden-tunnels-bugs-and-bigamy-a-strange-and-true-d-c-story
> 
> Additional details on the tunnels are found at www.shorpy.com/node/9542
> 
> Not online: Marc E. Epstein and Pamela M. Henson, "Digging for Dyar: The Man behind the Myth," American Entomologist 38 (Fall 1992): 148-69
> 
> Here are more links pertaining to the matter of the Dyars.
> 
> Mr. Dyar was into his family genealogy, having published a book:
> www.archive.org/stream/preliminarygenea03dyar/preliminarygenea03dyar_djvu.txt
> 
> Present day descendants of Dyar are around on genealogical links.
> 
> The Smithsonian has Harrison Dyar's papers:
> 
> siris-archives.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?uri=full=3100001~!229005!0
> 
> collections.si.edu/search/results.jsp?q=Dyar+Wellesca+Pollock+Allen
> 
> The Dyar's book on talks of the Faith is here: www.h-net.org/~bahai/diglib/books/A-E/D/dyar/Dyar.htm.
> 
> "Aseyeh" was the name which presumably 'Abdu'l-Bahá gave Mrs. Dyar, though evidence of this is sketchy. She also wrote many articles on the Faith published in the Washington newspapers during WWI.
> 
> Mrs. Dyar was listed in The Who's Who at google books
> 
> Mrs. Dyar had relatives in Seattle's earliest Bahá'í community (see
> attachment), and her daughter, Dorothy Dyar was a minister of the
> Unitarian Church in Seattle for a number of years where Bahá'ís were
> invited to give talks.
> 
> Allen v. Allen court case is available online at google books
> 
> METADATA
> 
> Views30209 views since posted 2005-05-09; last edit 2025-07-17 22:19 UTC;
> 
> previous at archive.org.../henson_harrison_dyar;
> URLs changed in 2010, see archive.org.../bahai-library.org
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> Citation: ris/2810
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> — *Dyar, Harrison Gray, Jr. (Used by permission of the curator)*