176 BIOLOGICAL PROBLEMS 



have, I believe, the best material in the world. We 

 have the means of bringing it into use, but we do not 

 employ it in the service of the country. If people 

 only realized the enormous loss to the country in- 

 volved by this neglect of science, I cannot help feel- 

 ing that some steps would be taken to find a remedy. 

 But we have no statistics, no reliable estimates, to put 

 before the public. Professor Dean 1 recently estimated 

 that, in the State of Kansas alone, the insect pests 

 cause damage to the extent of 30 millions of dollars 

 per annum, and other estimates by the American 

 entomologists are given at 10 to 40 per cent of the 

 crops, destroyed by insect pests. 



Now if we take the wheat crop alone in this country, 

 which is estimated at 10 million quarters worth, at 

 sixty shillings a quarter, ^30,000,000 and reckon 

 the loss by insect pests as 10 per cent, we see that the 

 damage we are trying to prevent by saving all our 

 food crops from the ravages of insects represents a 

 matter of millions of pounds per annum. The war, 

 with all the hardships and suffering it has produced, 

 has taught us the national need of economy of our 

 food-supplies. We may trust that it will also bring 

 home to us the losses we have been content to suffer 

 by our neglect in the past of the cultivation of applied 

 science. 



1 Dean: /. Econom. Entomology, II, 1918. 



S. J. H. 



