130 SOUTH AFRICAN BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



ticularly interested themselves in S. African bees, wasps 

 and ants. The best known amongst these is certainly 

 Dr. H. Brauns. P. Cameron also described several S. 

 African wasps and Dr. L. Peringuej worked at the Mutil- 

 lidae. Recently Dr. Arnold, of the Bulawayo Museum, 

 published a monograph on the Formicidae. Very little 

 has as yet been done with the very small wasps like the 

 Chaicididae, Proctotrupidae, ^Jclineuiaonidae and Bra- 

 conidae, and they await a young worker full of energy. 

 As regards collections of this order, apart from the pri- 

 vate collections of Dr. Brauns and Dr. Arnold, those of 

 the S. African Museum, Transvaal Museum and the 

 Southern Khodesia Museum are the only ones worth men- 

 tioning. 



jHaving given me your kind attention for so long a 

 time, I hope, ladies and gentlemen, you have not come to 

 the conclusion that the study of insects in this country 

 is being fairly well attended to. If so, you must have 

 lost sight of the fact that I have endeavoured to deal 

 with a group of animals comprising more than half the 

 number known to exist. When this is borne in mind, 

 when it is remembered that hardly a monograph exists 

 on even the most important groups, that it is expected, 

 in the Museums, that all this wealth of forms can be 

 dealt with by one person, whilst most other animal 

 groups have their specialists, even when these groups 

 are often smaller in number than some of the moderately 

 sized families of insects; when we further reflect that no 

 other animals affect to such an extent our economic life 

 as insects do, then I Avill not be contradicted when I say, 

 that we are just on the fringe of this study, that we do 

 not yet even know its boundary lines, far less the vast 

 riches of its interior. Even if the number of our present 

 workers Avas a hundred times more than at present, each 

 would find more work than could be finished in a life- 

 time. 



With these facts in mind, and realizing that it may 

 soon be too late to discover and study some of the most 



