1908.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT- -No. 73. 187 



ment - - for it was and is yet an experiment only, in a new 

 field- -should be placed in the hands of a man of the highest 

 technical training, with experience in this particular class of 

 work, and wide acquaintance with European entomologists and 

 the entomological conditions of that country. From a somewhat 

 extensive acquaintance with American workers on insect para- 

 sites, there seemed to the superintendent to be but one man 

 equal to this work, viz., the recognized American authority on 

 parasites, Dr. L. O. Howard, Chief of the Bureau of Ento- 

 mology of the Department of Agriculture at Washington, D. C. 

 Dr. Howard is without question the best-known worker on cer- 

 tain important groups of parasitic insects, has had large ex- 

 perience in their successful importation and dissemination, and, 

 what in this case is most valuable, has a wide acquaintance with 

 the entomologists of Europe. After a conference with Governor 

 William L. Douglas, who heartily approved of the arrange- 

 ment, the superintendent visited Washington and secured the 

 consent of the Honorable Secretary of Agriculture, James Wil- 

 son, as well as that of Dr. Howard himself, that the latter should 

 supervise and direct the work of importing parasites of the 

 moths to Massachusetts. 



The arrangement made was substantially that Dr. Howard 

 should direct the work, organize and care for European col- 

 lectors, and furnish one or more assistants at the Massachu- 

 setts laboratory; that the State of Massachusetts should finance 

 the operations, provide laboratory and supplies, and as many 

 assistants as were needed to attend to the work of breeding and 

 disseminating the parasites. In this way the cordial co-opera- 

 tion of national and State governments under the best possible 

 conditions was secured, and this hearty co-operation has con- 

 tinued to the present time. 



Dr. Howard immediately left for Europe, and engaged a 

 number of collectors of parasitic material; while the superin- 

 tendent organized and equipped a suitable laboratory for its 

 proper care. Dr. Howard's European trip was repeated in 1906 

 and again the present year, each time with increasing success, 

 until now we have some forty or fifty foreign collectors at work 

 gathering material in all important sections where the moths 

 are known to occur. The laboratory, first established in Mai- 



