WHOLE VOL. APPLIED ENTOMOLOGY HOWARD 165 



In the meantime many other questions of almost equal importance 

 arose, and the work of the Bureau comprised many scores of different 

 projects. Some important questions were solved. The New Mexico 

 range caterpillar offered a threatening problem in 1909. The pear 

 thrips problem in California was solved in the same year, although in 

 the Santa Clara Valley especially it threatened the extinction of the 

 pear industry. In 191 2 the onion thrips problem was solved, and 

 important advances were made in many directions. 



The work of the Bureau spread out enormously. It became ap- 

 parent not only that insect damage as a whole was increasing but that 

 most of the measures that had been adopted were emergency methods 

 and were very expensive, the majority of them being chemical or 

 mechanical. And it began to be realized that infinitely more funda- 

 mental work was necessary. The consideration of natural control was 

 elaborated, and a great deal of work was done in the way of importing, 

 from their native homes, the parasites and predators of the gipsy 

 moth, the brown-tail moth, the alfalfa weevil, the European corn 

 borer, the Japanese beetle, the European earwig, and other acciden- 

 tally introduced pests. 



Work on even more fundamental aspects was begun, such as the 

 physiology of insects and their reactions. And it was found necessary 

 to enlarge the facilities of the Bureau in its taxonomic work. This 

 work, consisting of the accurate identification of insects, has developed 

 very greatly. A wise cooperation has existed between the LTnited 

 States National Museum and the Federal Bureau of Entomology, 

 which has resulted in the building up of a very great collection of 

 identified insects, housed in the fireproof National Museum and pre- 

 sided over by competent specialists in the different groups, paid by 

 Department of Agriculture funds. This service has been of the most 

 important help to the more strictly economic workers of the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture ; and it has spread far beyond this, since it has 

 been of assistance to the economic entomologists of the different State 

 Experiment Stations and Agricultural Colleges. Complaint has been 

 made in some quarters of the delayed service of this branch of the 

 work, but the demands have been too great from institutions through- 

 out the States, and the Museum force of the Bureau will undoubtedly 

 be enlarged. 



I cannot well carry this account beyond 1927, but, although the 

 insect menace has not diminished (in fact, it is rapidly increasing), 

 the country is fast appreciating the danger and is preparing itself to 

 overcome it. 



