Anna Botsford Comstock (September 1, 1854 – August 24, 1930) was an acclaimed author, illustrator, and educator of natural studies. The first female professor at Cornell University, her over 900-page work, The Handbook of Nature Study (1911), is now in its 24th edition. Comstock was an American artist and wood engraver known for illustrating entomological text books with her her husband, John Henry Comstock including their first joint effort, The Manual for the Study of Insects (1885). Comstock worked with Liberty Hyde Bailey, John Walton Spencer, Alice McCloskey, Julia Rogers, and Ada Georgia as part of the department of Nature Study at Cornell University. Together they wrote nature study curricula to develop a curiosity for, and education about, the surrounding natural world. Comstock also was a proponent for conservationism by instilling a love and appreciation of the natural world around us. Early life and education Anna Botsford Comstock was born in a log house in Otto, New York to Marvin and Phebe Irish Botsford. At the age of three, the family moved to a frame house on a farm with both a horse and cattle barn. A self-providing family, they raised their own vegetables, had fruit orchards, raised cattle, pigs, sheep, and poultry. As the only child of the family, education was important both in a school house and at home where Comstock and her Quaker mother spent time together examining the wildflowers, birds, and trees. Phebe Botsford shared her passionate love of nature with her daughter, Anna, taking her into the nearby woods and fields. Here Anna learned "...the popular names of sixty or more common flowers; she taught her a dozen constellations..." and delighted over every beauty of nature. In 1871, as there was no high school in Otto, Comstock attended the Chamberlain Institute and Female College, one of two seminaries under the direction of the Methodist Church in Randolph, New York. It was here where Comstock first met the acquaintance of Martha Van Rensselaer, "...never dreaming how closely she would be associated with me in later life." Comstock's years at Chamberlain enhanced her love of literature, oration, and language. She graduated June 1873 giving her Salutatory speech, before her peers, in Latin. Comstock returned to Otto to teach school for a year in which she thoroughly enjoyed. The following summer of 1874, with her parents, Anna traveled westward to visit family. The trip postponed her start at