37 



are invariably more inquiries about common insect crop pests than any other subject 

 which may have been discussed, and when the meeting breaks up it is always the ento- 

 mologist who is detained to answer the questions of those who did not like to stand up and 

 speak before the others ; yet for all this, probably most of you will recognize the extreme 

 similarity which exists between the expectant smile which meets you from every part of 

 the audience when you are introduced to speak on insects in a new locality and that which 

 greets the announcement of the high-class comic songs which are usually dispensed on those 

 occasions. You also know the necessity, and have probably been often asked by the 

 chairman at these meetings in so many words, to begin with some joke to " catch the 

 attention of the audience." An appeal mu.st then be made to their pockets, and you must 

 remind them of the crops destroyed and dollars lost by depredations of pests which 

 levy tribiite every year, as the turnip flea-1)eetle, cut-worms, potato-beetles, etc. 



You explain the simplicity of many remedies and the great saving ;that will follow 

 their application. They hud not thought of these things ; gradually the smiles die out 

 and the other extreme of seriousness is reached. They awaken now ; with bodies leaning 

 forward and heads raised they drink in every word ; their eyes brighten and their 

 mouths gradually open with wonder at the losses they have suffered and might have 

 prevented had they but known of these simple things before. It touches them to the 

 quick to be told that ten cents' worth of Paris green would have saved their crop of 

 gooseberries or currants ; have done away with the necessity of sowing their turnips two 

 or three times at a hundred times the cost ; that ten cents expended in spraying an 

 apple or plum tree would have given them a return of three or four dollars' worth of good 

 fruit ; that by simply wrapping a piece of newspaper around their young cabbages or 

 tomatoes at the time of setting them out they might have saved a loss of perhaps 75 per 

 cent of their crop from the ravages of cut-worms. In short, that by following the advice 

 of entomologists, those who study the habits of what they had always called indiscrimin- 

 ately " bugs," they might have saved much that had disappeared from under their very 

 eyes. 



But I need not now pursue this thought further. Encouraged by the apparent 

 interest taken in the subject by the audience, one is sometimes tempted to speak too long, 

 but we must be discreet : farmers, as a rule, prefer a few new thoughts at a time and 

 to have these plainly put. Having finished, we [.erhaps sit down amidst applause and 

 requests to go on, and perhaps hear such complimentary remarks exchanged as " I tell 

 you what it is, there ?'s something in what he says," or, in a tone of surprise " That bug 

 man was pretty good." No. Farmers and ordinary individuals throughout the country 

 who are dependent upon them for food do not know, nor as a class appreciate, what they 

 do now, might, and will in the future owe to the labours of the entomologist. The conse- 

 quence is that those who do take up the study are few and isolated from each other. 

 Moreover, I maintain that there is no branch of natural science or practical agriculture to 

 which it is second in importance. The amounts lost and the value of produce which 

 might be saved every year in our staple crops alone, by i,following the advice of a com- 

 petent entomologist, are so enormous and of late years have been so often proved, that 

 before long the value of these studies must certainly be recognized. The chief hindrance 

 is the widespread and incomprehensible ignorance on the part of both growers and con- 

 sumers of agricultural produce of the present generation. This ignorance is rapidly 

 being dissipated by means of the various agricultural colleges and experiment stations all 

 over the world, where the rising generation is being trained. 



It will soon be seen that the scienti6c or accurate study of the habits of insects, by 

 which we are enabled to prevent the injury or loss of existing crops, of which we have 

 already learned the use or necessity, confers far greater benefits on the community at 

 large than the discovery or introduction of new jjroducts of which we have not yet felt 

 the need. But there is no natural study which pre-sents so many different aspects, nor 

 which provides so many subjects concerning which its students, although they must know 

 something, find it quite impossible to inform themselves thoroughly, which, in short, 

 demands that its different branches must be taken up by several specialists bound together 

 by some bond, &o that the knowledge gradually accumulated by one niay, at need, be 



