Cije Canadian Entomologist 



VOL. X. LONDON, ONT., OCTOBER, 1878. No. 10 



THE ANNUAL ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE 

 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF ONTARIO. 



To the Members of the Eiitomologieal Society of Ontario : 



Gentlemen, — Each revolving year brings its duties. To-day it is my 

 privilege and a very pleasing duty to offer again to you a few words of 

 encouragement, to refer briefly to some of the Entomological achieve- 

 ments of the past, and do what I can towards stimulating to further 

 effort. The importance of the study of Entomology is yearly impressing 

 itself more and more upon the public mind, as insect foes hitherto scarce 

 become abundant, or as new ones invade our domain. 



At present we are in danger from the approach of a new insect enemy 

 which promises to give us a great deal of trouble. I refer to the new 

 Carpet Bug, Anthrenus scrophularite. It was during the summer of 1874 

 that attention was first called by some of the newspapers in the Eastern 

 States to the great damage being done to carpets in some of their cities 

 on the sea-board by the ravages of an insect quite different from the well- 

 known Carpet Moth, Tinea tapetzella, and far more destructive ; one which 

 would attack new carpets as readily as old ones, and devour their sub- 

 stance with such rapidity and persistence as to raise a doubt in some 

 minds as to whether, in case this insect -becomes generally prevalent, the 

 use of carpets could be continued at all. Two years later this pest was 

 found common in Schenectady, N. Y., when they were shortly brought 

 under the notice of one of our most active and thorough workers in the 

 Entomological field, Prof. J. A. Lintner, of Albany, N. Y., who at once 

 proceeded to investigate the life history of the insect. Up to this time 

 little or nothing was known here in reference to it, other than that the 

 destructive creature was a larva of some sort, nearly oval in form and 

 about three-sixteenths of an inch long, with the body clothed with short 



