10 PEOCEEDINGS OF THE THIRD EXTOMOLOGICAL MEETING 



work in so many ways. One of the obvious results of the war has been 

 the great difficulty in obtaining apparatus. Another has been the set- 

 back to our work owing to the difficulty in obtaining identifications of 

 specimens, practically all of our younger specialists having gone to the 

 front. Another and more serious result has been the loss of parcels of 

 specimens owing to the piratical action of the Germans in sinking merchant 

 vessels indiscriminately. We at Pusa lost a large collection of Braconid 

 parasites of Earias fabia and E. insulana, which means a loss of several 

 years' work, and I understand that the Forest Research Institute and the 

 Zoological Survey have also sustained similar losses. Our losses in India 

 have of course been infinitesimal in comparison to the damage and 

 wanton destruction in Europe of collections in various branches of natural 

 history. Some of the finest entomological collections in the world were 

 in Russia, in Belgium and in Rumania. The dehberate destruction of 

 irreplaceable objects of science and art, such as has taken place during 

 this war, stamps the German people as an uncivihzed face of a very low 

 type. It is sincerely to be hoped that in the future all entomological 

 workers in India will mark their disapprobation of such misdeeds by 

 dechning to have any dealings with all Germans, that they will refuse 

 to work with apparatus of any kind " made in Germany," that they 

 will refuse to send any more collections for identification to Germany 

 and thereby avoid having any more Indian insects described in a most 

 barbarous language, and that they will as far as possible ignore all German 

 literature pubhshed since August 1914. 



This last point, even if we are all agreed on it, will be difficult to enforce 

 unless we can obtain universal agreement, but this might possibly be 

 obtained, as many others must be of the same way of thinking at the 

 present time. In his recent revision of the Hypsotropinse, for example, 

 Sir George Hampson says, " No Cjuotations from German authors pub- 

 hshed since 1st August 1914 are inserted. ' Hosfes Immani generis'.'' 



The International Entomological Congress, which met at Brussels 

 in 1910 and at Oxford in 1912, was to have held its Third Session at 

 Vienna in 1915. I have not heard any particulars regarding the third 

 session, which was postponed indefinitely, but it is possible that it may 

 be held at some date before our next Meeting and, if so, it would lend 

 weight to our views if we could lay before the Congress our collective 

 opinion on the subject of the treatment to be accorded to German workers 

 and German entomological literature in the future. 



My own view, which I have held for a long time, is that the whole 

 question of scientific publications requires overhauhng and that pubhshed 

 scientific work (in entomology at all events), to ensure proper recogni- 

 tion, should be restricted as regards both the media and the languages 



