WHOLE VOL. APPLIED ENTOMOLOGY HOWARD 211 



Greeks very careful and very strong proscriptions by law existed 

 against locusts at Lemnos, in Syria, and even in Cyrenaica. 



But after all, these early publications were very elementary. They 

 did not foreshadow in the least the development of the true economic 

 entomology. They showed something about the ravages of insects, 

 and, where they had remedies in mind, they were immediate remedies. 

 I have been delighted, therefore, to find in W. M. Wheeler's remark- 

 able chapter on " The Life and Work of Reaumur," published in his 

 book on " Natural History of Ants " (1926), a paragraph about that 

 wonderful Frenchman in which he shows that what interested 

 Reaumur most in the insects was their industries, their " genie,'' and 

 that he demonstrated through his work " that it is only through 

 such studies [as Reaumur's] that we can control and utilize these 

 diminutive engineers to our own advantage. His insistence on this 

 matter is so obvious that he may truly be said to be the creator of eco- 

 nomic entomology." This is going very far, but if Reaumur was 

 not the creator of economic entomology, he was apparently at least 

 the first man to show, what is becoming so obvious today, that we 

 cannot control insects until we know all about them. Wheeler shows 

 in a footnote that J. Rabaud is also of his opinion, and he quotes 

 from the latter as follows : " We must also maintain that Reaumur 

 was the first to demonstrate the practical usefulness of the study of 

 insects. Certain caterpillars, for example, which devour the leaves 

 of cabbages, flee the light and bury themselves in the ground during 

 the day. The depredations are noticed, but their authors will remain 

 unknown as long as this peculiarity of their mode of life is unknown." 



The work of Reaumur was not only well known but was greatly 

 admired by the English authors Kirby and Spence, who also evi- 

 dently knew very well the work of other writers on entomology, and, 

 possibly influenced by the work of Reaumur, there were several of 

 them who held the same views as to the economic importance of 

 the study of insects. The four-volume work by these English authors, 

 entitled "An Introduction to Entomology," the first volume of which 

 was published in 181 5, is well known to all entomologists; but the 

 man is rare who has of recent years read the wise words of these 

 men. No one knows which parts of this great work were written by 

 Kirby and which by Spence. They refused to differentiate these 

 portions, and each one is supposed to have shared in the production 

 of each chapter. But the old masterpiece is full of wise arguments 

 concerning the importance of the study of insects from all points of 

 view, perhaps especially from the economic point. They knew the 

 views of Reaumur and the small group of writers that followed him. 



