THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY, 



MARCH, 1910 



INSECTS AND ENTOMOLOGISTS: THEIE EELATIONS TO 

 THE COMMUNITY AT LAEGE 1 



Br Professor JOHN B. SMITH, Sc.D. 



RUTGERS COLLEGE 



WHEN your president first wrote me, suggesting that I should 

 deliver the popular lecture required by the constitution of this 

 society, he also suggested a subject: "What entomology has done for 

 the world, and its future." The subject is an attractive one; but it 

 required little consideration to decide that within the time at my 

 disposal for preparation and presentation it was impossible for me 

 to do justice to it. The mere compilation of what has been accom- 

 plished would require all the time, and I am distinctly doubtful con- 

 cerning my ability as a prophet. There are no records of any suc- 

 cessful ones in my family history and I have never observed any 

 suggestive symptoms in my own case. I therefore secured a com- 

 promise on a much less ambitious topic, and find that quite large 

 enough, for, until systematically set down, the importance of insects 

 in their relation to man, direct and indirect, is scarcely appreciated. 

 It is only within the last decade that our conceptions in this matter 

 have become at all clear, and among the public at large extreme haziness 

 is still the dominant condition. 



And it was not even easy to determine just what constitutes an 

 entomologist under our present-day methods of specialization, for 

 'while not so long ago any person interested in the study of insects at 

 all might be called an entomologist, there are now many students of 

 insects who know nothing at all about them as a whole, but a very 

 great deal about some small, almost or quite invisible part of a single 

 species or group. 



1 Popular lecture delivered at Boston, December 30, 1909, before the Ento- 

 mological Society of America, its friends and guests. 



VOL. LXXVI. — 15. 



