14 PEOCEEDINGS OF THE THIRD ENTOMOLOGICAL MEETING 



Taking, however, ten per cent, as an average and calculating the total 

 amount of loss annually in India we shall arrive at a figure w^hich at the 

 lowest cannot be placed at less than about Es. 5,00,000,000. We have a 

 lonof way to go yet in India before we can make people understand the 

 magnitude of this loss due to insect pests and to take Entomology really 

 seriously, but the war will have had at least one good result if it helps 

 to open people's eyes to these facts. 



The war has been responsible for the introduction of the word 

 "" camouflage," and you have probably all seen pictures of disguised 

 gun-positions, and of tanks and ships painted in weird combinations 

 of colours. But concealing colouration was not an invention of the war. 

 It was adopted by the animal world long ago and the insect world parti- 

 cularly can show innumerable examples of things being not what they 

 -seem to be. Later on, I shall show you an excellent example of this. 

 I might also call your attention to an article by Mr. J. C. Mottram in the 

 Proceedings of the Zoological Society for 1916 (pp. 383-419) which deals 

 ■with Indian butterflies and analyses their colour-patterns, showing 

 exactly how the various effects are produced. This is essentially the 

 '• camouflage " principle, as evolved during the war. 



Insects have in fact anticipated many of man's present-day inven- 

 tions. Our newspapers, which have brought us day by day the latest 

 news of the happenings during the great struggle, are printed oil paper 

 which is almost wholly made from wood-pulp and for years past the 

 pine forests of the north temperate zone in Europe and North America 

 have been ruthlessly destroyed at the rate of something like thirty 

 million tons of timber per annum to satisfy the world's insatiable desire 

 for paper. But few of those who read their daily paper know that the 

 first suggestion that wood-fibre might be used for paper-making was 

 made by an entomologist, Reaumur, who some two hundred years ago 

 observed the structure of wasps' nests and how they are made of a paper- 

 like material produced by these insects by the mastication of wood fibres. 

 His observation seems trivial but its after-effects afford only one of the 

 many instances of the foundation of a great industry upon results ob- 

 tained in scientific investigation. As Professor Silvanus P. Thompson 

 has well put it : — " The seemingly useless or trivial observation made by 

 one worker leads on to a useful observation by another ; and so science 

 advances, ' creeping on from point to point.' " It is impossible to 

 foresee what will be the ultimate practical outcome of even the smallest 

 observation in matters scientific, provided that the observation is accurate, 

 but we may be sure that sooner or later it will fit in with other equally 

 small and seemingly useless facts to form a coherent whole. When we 

 see the extensive uses of magneto-electricity now-a-days we are apt to 



