218 ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY. 



wonder as creatures endowed with a beauty and strength that 

 even the higher branches of the animal kingdom cannot rival. 



That the microscope has so furthered our knowledge of, and 

 is so essential to, the study of insect life, I think sufficiently 

 justifies my choice of a subject. I believe the subject is no 

 unimportant factor in one of our greatest national problems — viz., 

 the Agricultural question. For, as it is evident that the conditions 

 of agriculture in this country are undergoing and must undergo 

 great changes, to result, probably, in the giving-up of the old 

 methods and the old productions, and the development of dairy- 

 farming, and the cultivation, at present neglected, of fruit and other 

 products now largely imported from foreign countries — if this 

 comes about, a national knowledge of insect life as affecting agri- 

 culture will become of increasing necessity, for with every new 

 cultivation will come new dangers from our insect enemies. Many 

 an insect at present rare in this country, and of no general or 

 economic interest, may, through the introduction of some new 

 crop or some new method of working the land, suddenly become 

 a most formidable plague, placing the prosperity of the cultivator 

 in the utmost peril. Such dangers can only be met and com- 

 bated with success by a thorough knowledge of these minute 

 creatures : their lives and habits, their histories, and, above all, 

 their enemies themselves, for the most part insects. The majority 

 of farmers and gardeners regard all insects alike as things to be 

 killed wherever seen, and in carrying out this theory murder some 

 of their best friends, while many of their deadliest foes, from 

 their habit of closely concealing themselves or from their minute 

 size, escape detection. 



An important element in the education of a farmer should 

 be the teaching the use of the magnifying lens and the natur- 

 alist's habit of close and minute examination and accurate 

 estimation of the facts he observes. Indeed, not only for the 

 farmer is this teaching necessary, but I would urge that it, with a 

 general teaching of zoology, ought to form a distinctive part of 

 every boy's education. I mean that Natural History should not (as 

 is now mostly the case where it is taught at all) be taught as an 

 extra subject, but it should have a prominent place in the curricu- 

 lum of every school, to be taught with as much regularity and 



