APPLIED ENTOMOLOGY — HOWARD 391 



oliinch buK, the army worm, the Hessian fly, and the potato buf,'. The bill pro- 

 vides for an investigator in chief at a salary of $4,000 a year, the Herculean 

 labors of the head of the Agrieultural Bureau preventing that oflicial from 

 giving the necessary time to it. The act, should it pass the House — which 

 sei'ms doubtful — will be a new application of the ^Tcat ptinrlplo of division of 

 labor, for in future the Ai^ricultural Commissioner will scatter the seed broad- 

 oast over the land, while the national entomologist will follow closely on bis 

 trail and exterminate the various bugs that may attack the ripening grain. 

 We only want now another commissioner to harvest the crops, and another to 

 see that they get to deep water, and the husbandman will be entirely relieved 

 from grinding toil. 



It was ideas of that sort and public opinion of that kind that 

 Kilcy and his colleaojiies had to combat in those days; and the prog- 

 ress made in the face of ignorance and apathy is extraordinary. 



When Ililey left Missouri his phice as entomologist of that State 

 was not filled. Illinois appointed Dr. William LeBaron as suc- 

 cessor to Walsh, and he in turn was succeeded by the Rev. Cyrus 

 Thomas, who was followed by Dr. S. A. Forbes. 



With the passage of the Hatch Act in 1888 and the starting of 

 State agricultural experiment stations, a very considerable impulse 

 was given to work in entomology; and the creation of positions, 

 enabled by this act, turned the attention of a number of good young 

 men in this direction. It seemed for the first time that there might 

 be a career in economic entomology. As a result also, the teaching 

 of economic entomology received a great impetus. New departments 

 of this kind were established in the agricultural colleges and State 

 imiversities. The demand for teachers at first was so great as to 

 exceed the supply of trained men, and the early publications of the 

 agricultural colleges and experiment stations were for the most part 

 compilations from the writings of Fitch, Riley, Walsh, LeBaron, 

 Thomas, Packard, and A. J. Cook. A. S. Packard, jr., by the way, 

 had served for two years as State entomologist of ^Massachusetts, and 

 Prof. A. J. Cook had been lecturing on insects for a number of years 

 at the Michigan State Agricultural College. 



Soon after the starting of the experiment stations under the 

 Hatch Act, the Association of Economic Entomologists was formed, 

 and this association has come to be a very powerful factor in the 

 development of applied entomology and in the correlation of the 

 work of the many people engaged. 



The closing decade of the last century, however, witnessed four 

 striking events that focused the attention of \evy many people and 

 of very many countries on the subject of insect damage. The gipsy 

 moth and the brown-tail moth were found in Massachu.setts; the 

 cotton boll weevil cro.ssed tiie Rio Grande from Mexico; the San 

 Jose scale was found in the East, and insects were discovered to 

 carry certain diseases of man and of domestic animals. 



