2l6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL.84 



most tenacious arc those men who are possessed with an idea which they urge 

 to the limit of folly. Happily, as observation and experiment press more closely 

 upon the problem, the dreamers pass- out, idle discussions give place to the study 

 of facts, useful research concentrates upon points still obscure, leaving in full 

 light those that science admits as sufficiently plain. 



Present-day workers in economic entomology, especially those who 

 have been connected with any of the major projects such as the 

 cotton boll weevil, the San Jose scale, the gipsy moth, the European 

 corn borer, or the Japanese beetle, will recognize from this quotation 

 that the same sort of thing has occurred over and over again and that 

 subjects "of this kind must be studied by competent men who must 

 pay little attention to the suggestions of the obviously ill-informed. 



I have given so much space to this consideration of the Phylloxera 

 in Europe for the reason that serious work in economic entomology, 

 supported by Federal apj^ropriations, originated in many European 

 countries as the result of this extraordinary check to viticulture by 

 the pest introduced from North America. We have been coming to 

 believe in the United States that such scourges, even though they have 

 caused enormous loss for a while, are really blessings in disguise, 

 since they have added greatly to our knowledge of the liest methods 

 of fighting insects, have shown the peo]:)le the faulty ways in which 

 they have been carrying on the industries affected, and have awakened 

 the people to the necessity for scientific work on a large scale. 



In this same way the Phylloxera experience was probably in the 

 long run good for most of the European countries. As an example, 

 the Phylloxera Commission in Hungary, headed by Dr. G. Plorvath, 

 was, when the Phylloxera jiroblem was solved, turned into a perma- 

 nent service for the study of injurious insects, with J. Jablonowski at 

 its head, Horvath himself retiring to his technical work in the Hun- 

 garian National Museum. In the same way, other European services 

 were started. 



CRE.\T BRITAIN 



England has been a center of entomological studies for very many 

 years. The Entomological Society of London is one of the oldest of 

 the world's entomological societies that are still in existence. But for 

 a hundred years or more before this Society took form there were 

 entomologists who were greatly interested in insects, and there were 

 publications about insects in England that took a very high rank. 

 As a matter of fact the Society of Aurelians was in existence in the 

 eighteenth century and held its meetings at the Swan Tavern in 

 Change Alley. Its collections and books were burned in the great fire 



