AMERICAN ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 



By R. LYDEKKER, F.R.S. 



With the practical common-sense characteristic of the nation 

 generally, the Government of the United States was one of the 

 first to recognise the importance of full knowledge of the habits 

 and life-histories of the numerous species of insects, both indi- 

 genous and introduced, which infest cultivated crops, orchards, 

 and plantations in such numbers as to constitute more or less 

 serious menaces to the progress, if not to the very existence, of 

 agriculture and horticulture. Of course local conditions have had 

 something to do with the energy displayed by the authorities in 

 this connection, for it cannot be denied that America, with its 

 illimitable area of cultivated land, and climatic conditions vary- 

 ing from the tropical to the arctic, offers facilities for the propa- 

 gation and spread of insect-life altogether unparalleled in 

 Europe. This, however, in no wise lessens the credit due to 

 the Federal Government for its early recognition of the supreme 

 necessity of fighting insect invasions with all the available 

 resources of science, and the consequent establishment of the 

 Bureau of Entomology as a division of the Department of 

 Agriculture. Nor have the dependencies of the great Western 

 republic been slow to follow in the footsteps of the central 

 Government, as witness the establishment at Honolulu of an 

 experimental entomological station by the Hawaiian Sugar- 

 Planters' Association, which has already done good work, and 

 will doubtless accomplish still more in the near future. In the 

 Philippines also the importance of economic entomology has 

 been fully recognised since those islands came under American 

 sway. 



In some manner affiliated to the Bureau of Entomology, there 

 is also the American Association of Economic Entomologists, 

 the reports of whose meetings are published by the official 

 establishment. 



The enormous field covered by the work of the Bureau and 

 the Association is very clearly indicated in the report of the 



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