52 THE EEPOET OF THE No. 36 



In dealing with such a broad question as this we have to bear in mind not only 

 the work that has been and is being done by entomologists in Canada, but also 

 that of our neighbours to the south, whose assistance has always been most freely 

 and generously given, and to whom a very large part of our success is due. 



In the United States entomology has gained greatly in prestige of late 

 years, and is now an important subject in the curricula of many of the Universi- 

 ties as well as the Agricultural Colleges. There are now in the United States, 

 together with Hawaii and Porto Rico, no fewer than sixty-one Agricultural Col- 

 leges and experiment stations, at forty-seven of which investigations in applied 

 entomology are being carried on. In Washington, the appropriations made for 

 the current fiscal year for all the different phases of work of the Bureau of Ento- 

 mology, amounted to $601,920.00; the scientific employees of the Bureau number 

 185 and besides these there are nearly 400 non-scientific employees, particularly in 

 connection with the Gipsy-moth work. 



Of course we cannot expect to see anything comparable to this in Canada 

 for many years to come, but there is no doubt that, with the present rapid growtli 

 of population in our West, and the ever-increasing area of cultivated land, corre- 

 spondingly greater facilities will be needed for the teaching and dissemination of 

 the most advanced methods in agriculture and horticulture, and hence in the 

 control of the insect pests of the farm, the orchard and the garden. 



When our land is more fully occupied and farming methods have become 

 more intensive, more attention will doubtless be given by the average farmer to 

 such problems as the control of insect pests, but it is the duty of the economic 

 entomologist to do all in his power to spread abroad his knowledge of such 

 subjects before it is demanded of him. Excellent work, as we all know, has 

 already been accomplished along these lines by the staff of the Division of 

 Entomology at Ottawa, the Ontario Agricultural College, through our own Annual 

 Reports and the various agricultural and horticultural journals, as well as through 

 the Nature Study movement in our schools; but we need more well-trained workers 

 and there is a great field for useful work in this branch of entomology for all 

 who are willing and able to give their time and energies to it. It is, in fact, this 

 branch of entomology that is most closely identified with our every-day lives and will 

 appeal to the largest section of the public, and it is therefore the one that will always 

 be, in a sense, the leading branch in an agricultural country like Canada. 



But there is another branch of economic entomology, that has as yet received 

 comparatively little attention in Canada, but which is scarcely of less importance 

 than the preceding. I refer to forest entomology. 



We have only recently become fully alive to the fact that our forests are not 

 inexhaustible, and we are now hearing from authoritative sources that our forest 

 wealth has been grossly exaggerated. We hear a great deal about the reckless 

 waste of our timber resources through improvident methods of lumbering that 

 utterly disregard the needs of future generations, and we are tired of hearing of 

 the disastrous fires which follow in the wake of the lumberman's axe, and fre- 

 quently destroy as many as twenty trees for every one that is felled by the lum- 

 berman. 



Few realize, however, the important part played by insects in the destruction 

 of our forests, and the close relationship that exists between forest fires and 

 injurious outbreaks of insects. Dr. Hopkins, of the United States Bureau of 

 Forestry, our leading authority on Forest Entomology, has shown that not 

 only do many species of wood-boring beetles appear in large numbers after forest 



