THE PRESENT POSITION OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY. 433 



for help from the members of this Society ; but this is my first appear- 

 ance before a Society to whom I am wholly unknown, and I hope that 

 if any feel drawn to this work they will have no difficulty in finding a 

 subject and no hesitation in undertaking it. 



2. ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY. 



Economic entomology is a branch of knowledge resting on the one 

 hand on pure entomology and on the other on agriculture and commerce.* 

 It may be defined as an endeavour to control all insect activities that 

 affect the welfare of man, either beneficially or harmfully ; it is an 

 applied science, an adaptation of " pure " entomology to the needs of 

 agriculture and commerce. 



Primarily its aim is practical, to obtain visible results either in the 

 reduction of loss sustained from harmful insects or a commercially valuable 

 increase in the useful products derived from insects. This aim will be 

 attained by the scientific or theoretical study of the subject, the investi- 

 gation of the laws that govern insect increase, of the conditions under 

 which insects thrive. Its secondary aim therefore is to accumulate 

 that scientific knowledge, which though not in itself directly valuable, 

 does eventually lead to improved practical methods. 



It will be said that I have put the cart before the horse ; but we must 

 remember that the purely scientific work has to some extent been done ; 

 there is a basis of knowledge on which to commence practical applications 

 and the latter work is far behind the progress made in some branches of 

 pure entomology. For us now the practical work is the primary object ; if 

 there were more workers, we could carry both on hand in hand, but ento- 

 mologists do not extend their researches to the problems that beset the eco- 

 nomic worker, and the latter must, from his isolation, confine himself to 

 pushing on the immediately useful work before him. Economic entomology 

 is a modern development due, net to science, but to the urgent needs 

 of agriculture ; it is from the very scanty number of workers far behind 

 other branches of entomology, and those who work in it find that the 

 basis of directly useful knowledge has to be laid to the exclusion of such 

 scientific work as has not some immediately tangible result. This is 

 especially the case in India ; I draw attention to it, not because I think 



• Forast Entomology, a branch of Economic Entomology, is not included in the subject 

 of this paper. Its aims are slightly different and it would be au additional complication in a 

 paper wh : ch is already quite sufficiently involved- 



