EDITORIAL. 403 



would seem that a responsibility rests upon its officials to provide 

 such a record. It is an opportunity as well as a duty. It is for 

 protection as well as for general understanding. 



The character of the annual report will naturally depend upon 

 circumstances, governed frequently by requirements within the State. 

 While it may not be made the detailed record of the station's experi- 

 ments and conclusions, it may well deal with its main lines of effort, 

 and the important departures and events of the year, to a greater 

 extent than is the case with the purely perfunctorj^ report. Unless 

 it does this much it can hardly be said to meet expectations. Several 

 stations have recently modified their reports so as to strike a happy 

 medium between the two extremes. Such an account may be made 

 readable and instructive, and enables the busy man to gain an intelli- 

 gent and quite comprehensive view of the station and its work. 



When the State agricultural experiment stations were founded 

 under the Hatch Act, it was difficult in certain lines of work to secure 

 competent men, and this was especially so in regard to economic 

 entomology. There were very few well trained economic entomolo- 

 gists then in the country, and for the most part stations taking up 

 entomological w^ork were obliged to appoint either untrained men or 

 to take men who had established some reputation for themselves as 

 entomologists without having engaged in directly practical work, 

 while in other cases the entomological work was handled by the agri- 

 culturist or the horticulturist of the station. 



New Jersey ajDpointed as her first entomologist, Kev. Dr. George 

 D. Hulst, a man who had made his entomological reputation by work- 

 ing upon a family of moths. He served for only a year, and in 1889, 

 Dr. John Bernhardt Smith took his place and remained connected 

 with the station from that time until March 13, last, when he died 

 at his home in New Brunswick. 



Dr. Smith was one of the most prolific writers on economic ento- 

 mology which this country has seen, and his work was sound. During 

 the twenty-two years of his active work in economic entomology, he 

 built up a reputation for himself and for his State second to that of 

 no individual or institution. During the first year of his appoint- 

 ment, he issued four special bulletins of much value, and from that 

 time on he handled in a masterly way every entomological emergency 

 that made its appearance. 



Dr. Smith was bom on November 21, 1858, in New York City, of 

 German parentage, and was educated in the public schools. He was 

 admitted to the bar in 1880, and practiced law in Brooklyn between 

 1880 and 1884. He M^as greatly interested in insects, joined the 

 Brooklyn Entomological Society of that time, and became editor of 

 the bulletin of that society. This publication he afterwards devel- 

 oped into a periodical known as '"''Entomologica Americana^'' which 



