ENTOMOLOGY HOWARD 371 



of them are potential pests of other regions. This subject was con- 

 sidered at some length at the recent Pan-Pacihc Food Conservation 

 Conference, and one of the resolutions adopted at that conference 

 recommended the af)pointment of an international crop protection 

 committee to promote surveys, to encourage research work, to pro- 

 mote the development by each countrj' of larger numbers of trained 

 workers, and to obtain agreements and understandings between 

 countries regarding the giving of prompt notification of the appear- 

 ance of new pests and to secure the cooperation of countries in the 

 prevention of spread. 



All these points that I have considered will no doubt be sufficiently 

 obvious to you, and very possibly have been in your minds. There 

 is a host of lesser suggestions that may be made, our needs are so 

 very great. But this is not the place to go into an extended cate- 

 gory of lesser things. 



As I come to this point I realize more than ever that I have been 

 writing all the time as an economic entomologist. Down to very 

 recent times there has been a class distinction between the economic 

 entomologists and the other workers, especially the taxonomists of 

 the museums and Avorkers in many laboratories. As the field lias 

 widened out, as the seriousness and vastness of the situation confront- 

 ing humanity becomes apparent, these workers have been coming 

 closer together ; the economists have felt the importance of the labors 

 of the others. The vastly greater part of the work of the economist 

 has not been basic; it has consisted largely of an effort to apply 

 known facts to special problems. The emergencies confronting him 

 have been so great that he has had no time to conduct the long 

 investigations that might give him other weapons than those nearest 

 to his hand. His fight has been so strenuous that in a way he has 

 lost his perspective. 



But he has done magnificent work. He has confronted many diffi- 

 cult situations with success, and Avith simple weapons. But the 

 great basic principles which have brought about the conditions 

 which he has been called upon to meet have not been considered by 

 him in his haste for immediate relief measures. He has available 

 no more than a superficial knowledge of the forms he is trying to 

 fight. It is true that he has carefully worked out in a more or less 

 general way the life histories of many of the crop pests, but beyond 

 that he knows little of what must be known. 



I haA^e just stated that he has waged a good fight " with simple 

 weapons," but this must not be taken in a derogatory way. An 

 admirable book, Avhich (patriotically) I Avish had been written by 

 Americans, was published in England in 1923 by R. A. Wardle, of 

 the University of Manchester, and Philip Buckle, of the University 



