388 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 30 



Moreover, I have seen, contrary to the old ideas, that the fear of 

 insects is increasing; that people realize that they are causing in- 

 creasing damage to humanity in an increasing number of ways. 



Last Friday the United States House of Representatives, after a 

 10-minute discussion, passed a joint resolution appropriating 

 $4,250,000 to be expended in an effort to exterminate the Mediterra- 

 nean fruit fly in Florida. This morning the Senate, without discussion, 

 passed the same resolution. Two years ago the Congress appropri- 

 ated the very great sum of $10,000,000 to be spent in an effort to 

 retard the westward march of the European corn borer. Fifty -three 

 years ago, after the Rocky Mountain locust, or western grasshopper, 

 had devastated large portions of four of our Western States, not 

 only causing enormous financial loss, but bringing starvation and 

 disease to verj' many people, a bill was introduced before Congress 

 to appropriate $25,000 for a commission of entomologists to investi- 

 gate locusts and to try to find mean? to prevent future damage of 

 the sort. The Congress, after long consideration, reduced the amount 

 from $25,000 to $18,000, and a bill for the latter amount was passed. 



Now what has caused the change between the conditions as I have 

 described them as of the present and the condition that existed 

 only a little more than 50 years ago? That is the story that I am 

 trying to tell elsewhere in some detail, and I will brief its salient 

 points in this paper. 



Let us assume that the territory now covered by the United States 

 of America w^as in a condition of at least temporary stable equi- 

 librium in regard to its animal and plant life at the period when 

 settlement by the white race began. For a great many years the 

 increase in the white population was slow. Agriculture was of 

 small extent and spread out slowly into the forests and plains. 

 There was very slow communication with other countries and none 

 at all with any but those of Europe. There was practically no 

 chance for the accidental importation of insect pests. The crops 

 that were cultivated were in large part of the sorts that were new to 

 the country. Native insects at first did not damage them seriously, 

 and down to the peried of the War of the Revolution there were 

 few complaints of insect damage. 



After the revolution, however, from time to time the scarce news- 

 papers that paid attention to agriculture would record the unusual 

 abundance of some pest; but on the whole no attention was paid 

 to the subject that would warrant mention in a brief paper like this. 

 The only great crop pests that had come to us from Europe prior 

 to the revolution were the codling moth and the Hessian fly. 



Prior to 1800, the only writer on the subject we need mention here 

 was William Dandridge Peck (1763-1822), who was professor of 

 natural history in Harvard College and who wrote in 1795 about 



