54 THE EEPOET OF THE No. 36 



of thousands of dollars to the State of Massachusetts alone, and at the present 

 time no effort is being spared by the United States Bureau of Entomology to 

 bring the pests under control. We in Canada have had the benefit of their 

 experience in dealing with this great problem, and it is gratifying to know that 

 the knowledge thus gained is being so vigorously put into practice by our friends 

 at Ottawa. 



While thus emphasizing the importance of applied entomology, we must 

 not lose sight of the value of the systematist's work. The economic entomologist 

 deals with insects irrespective of the orders to which they belong and as it is no 

 longer possible for anyone to have an intimate systematic knowledge of all the 

 orders, it becomes necessary for the economic entomologist to depend in large 

 measure upon the systematists in the various orders for the determination of the 

 species with which he has to deal, although it is, of course, true that in many 

 cases the investigator must have first hand information from both standpoints. 



On the other hand, the systematic student should be more than a mere 

 classifier of genera and species. Nothing in entomology, except nomenclatural 

 disputes, can be drier than the grinding out of new species and varieties by the 

 man who knows them only by their dead carcasses. The good systematist is a 

 good deal more than a mere separator of genera and species. He is interested 

 in the ecology of the forms he studies, their distribution and the significance 

 thereof, and he keeps the phylogenetic standpoint ever before him in his work of 

 determining specific and group characters. The whole aim of classification being 

 the expression of the natural affinities of organisms, he who fails to observe this 

 point in classifying genera and species has altogether missed the mark. 



In Canada there is an immense field for the systematic entomologist in all 

 orders. Some of the orders have been fairly well marked in certain localities of 

 limited area, and a good deal of information on the distribution of species is 

 gradually being accumulated by tiie Entomological Eecord, which was first estab- 

 lished by the late Dr. Fletcher in the Annual Eeport of our Society for 1901, 

 and is now conducted by Mr. Gibson. Most of the smaller orders, however, sucJi 

 as the Neuroptera, Plecoptera, Ephemerida and Trichoptera, have been almost 

 wholly neglected by Canadian entomologists, and the scant knowledge we possess 

 of their occurrence and distribution in Canada is chiefly the result of casual 

 captures made by general collectors and determined by specialists in the United 

 States. Among these smaller orders, the Neuropteroid orders as they are col- 

 lectively termed, are some such as the Ephemerida and Trichoptera that are not 

 only exceedingly interesting in their habits but are of considerable economic im- 

 portance in furnishing food for fish, a fact that will be appreciated by those of us 

 who had the pleasure of hearing Prof. Needham's address here last year. He 

 showed us how much of the waters of our large swampy areas might be utilized 

 for fish-culture and their productivity increased by the introduction and propaga- 

 tion of suitable species of may-fiies. The importance of our inland fisheries and 

 the growing need of exact knowledge of the feeding habits of our fresh-water 

 fishes are urgent reasons why these groups of aquatic insects should receive more 

 attention in Canada than they have done heretofore. 



There are still other branches of applied entomology that offer plenty of 

 problems to the entomologist in Canada. The relation of insects to public health 

 is a subject of importance in every civilized community and the great benefit to 

 humanity that has been gained by such discoveries as that of the relation that the 

 mosquito bears to malaria and yellow fever and the house-fly to typhoid fever and 



