CHAPTER XII 



THE WAR ON INSECTS 



Having detailed the character of the injury done 

 by insects and given some idea of its extent, the question 

 arises; what can we do to prevent such loss, and what 

 has been done in this direction? There is yet, in the 

 older settled portions of our country a rather widely 

 distributed feeling that as insects exist and feed on 

 plants, they were created for that purpose and that it 

 is meddling with a divine institution to attempt their 

 destruction or limit the amount of injury done. It is 

 the same sort of spirit that protests that "it can't be 

 done" whenever any attempt is made to better sani- 

 tary conditions, to control the spread of disease or to 

 limit the agencies that make for the spread of infection. 

 Supplemented by the equally wide-spread conviction 

 that any grown man that engaged in so trifling an 

 occupation as the collection and study of insects must 

 of necessity be deficient in intellect or of unsound 

 mind, this condition was responsible for retarding the 

 development of economic entomology to the middle of 

 the last century, and even then it developed slowly 

 and failed of general appreciation. 



With the establishment of agricultural experiment 

 stations under the Hatch Act of 1887 conditions began 

 to change. Entomologists were appointed in several of 

 them; their work began to make itself felt, its im- 

 portance began to be appreciated, and now there is 

 scarcely a state or territory in which there is not at 

 least one working economic entomologist. In 1889 an 

 Association of Economic Entomologists was formed 

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