328 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1953 



strata within several hundred feet. His determinations were worth 

 millions of dollars in revenue to the oil companies and in taxes to the 

 United States Government. Though other techniques, electronic and 

 geophysical, are now frequently employed in prospecting for oil, the 

 Foraminifera are still important in identifying and correlating strata 

 and in subsurface mapping in oil-producing areas. 



The foregoing is perhaps the most outstanding example of the even- 

 tual successful application of purely systematic studies and the nam- 

 ing of species to economic ends. It can safely be said that most, if not 

 all, systematic work has a dollars-and-cents value, perhaps not today 

 or tomorrow, but certainly in time. 



BIOLOGICAL CONTROLS 



In looking over some recent literature dealing with biological con- 

 trols, I saw reference to the classical example with which I became 

 acquainted in my earlier da3's in the Government service some 40 years 

 ago. It was the story of the identification of an insect that played 

 the role of a villain threatening the destruction of the sugar industry 

 of Mauritius back in 1910, and how it was circumvented in the best 

 tradition of the popular "who-done-its" by a systematic entomologist. 

 The villain was a destructive white grub that bored in the roots of 

 the sugarcane, killing the plant. It appeared very suddenly in such 

 alarming numbere and spread so rapidly that the threat of the ruina- 

 tion of the plantations of sugarcane, the big money crop of the island, 

 could not be ignored. With such information as was at hand, the best 

 guess was that the borer was the larva of an African genus of beetle 

 represented on the island by two species and the only remedies that 

 suggested themselves were to dig up the root stumps to destroy the 

 larvae or to catch the beetles as they flew about at night in search of 

 food. The invader, lurking unknown in introduced cane cuttings, 

 and finding itself a favorable environment without enemies, in re- 

 productive capacity far outstripped all human efforts to control it 

 despite the fact that in less than 6 months more than 27 million insects 

 were accounted for. Meanwhile, the aid of the specialists in the 

 British Museum was sought. With the extensive reference collec- 

 tions and library there available, it was soon determined that the beetle 

 was not an African one, but a New World form, of which, however, 

 no record or specific description could be found. In an ensuing search 

 through the large collections of that Museum three specimens of this 

 selfsame beetle, labeled "Trinidad," turned up. The fact that this 

 native of the West Indies had never been mentioned in literature 

 implied that it was of so little economic importance that it had failed 

 to attract the attention of any entomologists stationed in the islands. 

 What kept its numbers down at home ? 



