WHOLE VOL. APPLIED ENTOMOLOGY HOWARD 3 



nomic entomology ; and at the same time there was, on the part of 

 the economic workers, a feeHng that the museum men and the other 

 taxonomists were of comparatively slight importance. 



All this, however, has passed away. Economic entomology has 

 shown itself not only to be a most necessary study, but its workers, 

 by the adoption of strictly scientific methods, have gained a high 

 standing among the other scientific workers. Moreover, the economic 

 workers, as the subject has broadened out before them, have come to 

 realize that the work of the museum men is basic, that the work, in 

 fact, of all men who study insects from any point of view is useful 

 and that it is, in the last analysis, economic in its character. There 

 has grown up a mutual respect among all classes of workers in ento- 

 mology, 



A little more than sixty years ago the grapevine Phylloxera dis- 

 turbed Europe very greatly. The wine grape was threatened with 

 extinction. Commissions were established in various countries, re- 

 search was started, and modern European economic entomology 

 really began. 



Serious scientific work on problems of insect control in America 

 began only a few years before this. The enormous expansion of agri- 

 culture in North America, the haste to grow enormous quantities of 

 food in the quickest and the cheapest way, resulted in types of agri- 

 cultural practice peculiarly favorable to insect increase, until we now 

 realize that by our own labor we have been feeding constantly increas- 

 ing myriads of plant ]:)ests and have been really responsible for their 

 increase. 



The situation that now confronts us is this: The population is 

 increasing nuich more rapidly than the food supply. We must invent 

 new food ; or we must control the birth rate ; or we must control all 

 waste. The enormous waste caused by insects is the most obvious and 

 is the form of waste towards which our own Government and some 

 others are now turning their serious attention. 



The growth of economic entomology has been rapid, and its study 

 is now expanding like the traditional snowball. Its real origin has 

 been so recent that there has been no demand for a historical record 

 of its growth. To be of permanent value, however, events must be 

 recorded in some order at a time approximating that of their occur- 

 rence, if exact truth is to be preserved for the future. But a mere 

 record is not enough. Causes, often deep causes, must be considered ; 

 and the interpretation of the mind and point of view of the earliest 

 historian of a movement is in itself a part of the essential research 

 of the later historian. Sir Arthur Keith in his address as President 



