1914 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 95 



these constituted only a trap or baits, the worms found under the traps being killed 

 by some sharp instrument. This measure, however, seems never to have become 

 popular. 



The spread of the so-called Colorado potato beetle over the country from the 

 west eastward brought the use of Paris green and London purple as insecticides to 

 the front, but, again, this did not help in the least the troubles of the ordinary 

 farmer. 



The work of Riley, Packard and Thomas, on the western migratory locust was 

 the first important effort made to aid the farmer in devising practical measures 

 of fighting destructive ir, sects over large areas. 



The spread of the cabbage butterfly from the east to the westward brought into 

 use as an insecticide the powdered blossoms of Pyrethrum, but the farmer does not 

 raise cabbage as either a grain or a forage crop. 



Studies of the cotton worm, by Eiley and others, brought Paris green again 

 into use and developed that useful insecticide, kerosene emulsion, but the farmer 

 cannot make use of these in his cultivation of wheat, oats, corn, rye or barley; 

 neither can he apply them to insect pests on his broad acres of forage crops. 



In the same way, fighting the codling moth and San Jose scale have developed 

 the use of arsenical sprays, as well as those of lime and sulphur, crude petroleum 

 and other sprays and washes. But none of these are of the slightest use to the 

 farmer in his fields, no matter how valuable they may have been to the fruit grower. 



The farmer has therefore largely occupied the position of a skeptical spectator, 

 who, while seeing clearly the benefits derived from applied entomology by his brother 

 husbandmen, the fruit grower, the gardener, and even the cotton planter, was seem- 

 ingly himself debarred from sharing in these benefits, because of the measures 

 being inapplicable to his crops, and, even if this were not the case, his wide areas 

 would render their use impracticable. 



Besides all of this the farmer has, himself, held somewhat the position of a 

 critical onlooker as the result of other causes. 



Before the advent of experiment stations, and even for some time afterwards, 

 letters addressed to the members of university faculties, complaining of the ravages 

 of insects and asking relief, brought the actual farmer little consolation. The 

 replies he received to his appeals for relief were usually couched in terms to which 

 he was unused, and much of the text of these replies in a language that he did not 

 understand. Moreover, the replies were usually penned by men who had little or 

 no practical knowledge of agriculture, and thus there grew up between the two 

 not only a continually widening breach, but in many cases an absolutely intolerant 

 feeling on the part of each for the other. 



This was approximately the relative position of the man from the campus 

 and the man from the farm, at the time of the establishing of the Experiment Sta- 

 tions, though there were, of course, some brilliant exceptions. Besides this, many, 

 probably the majority, of those who were afterwards to make the Experiment Sta- 

 tions a success, were yet to be trained and given their practical experience in com- 

 bining the science and practice of agriculture ; and it may be stated that the science 

 of entomology, for reasons previously given, has impressed the farmer the least 

 favourably. Farmers had always looked upon insect depredations precisely as they 

 did other natural phenomena like drouth, storms and floods, fully convinced by 

 ages of experience that nothing could be done to prevent them, and, therefore they 

 must be endured to the end. Entomological literature, however elementary and 



