28 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 12 



of insect appearance and the factors that bring it about? When shall 

 we forecast insect abundance as we now forecast the weather and crop 

 production? Do we understand climatic and ecological factors in in- 

 sect distribution? Have we lived with these insects as Agassiz lived 

 with the fishes or Audubon with the birds, or have we observed them 

 in the stated hours of an office day? Why has the chinch bug, once 

 seriously injurious in northern Wisconsin, abandoned the state? Why 

 has the box-elder bug moved to the northeast? Why has the corn-root 

 worm moved north-west? Why is the codling-moth extraordinarily 

 abundant in the arid regions, while the potato bug is there unknown? 

 What caused the disappearance of the Rocky Mountain locust? Why 

 does temperature accelerate the development of one insect and retard 

 that of another? Why does a single puncture of one insect cause more 

 injury to a plant than a hundred punctures of another species? 



Beneath these and a thousand other problems, are the principles 

 that underlie our science. They involve many factors and interrela- 

 tions with all the sciences. They have been approached from many 

 angles and through the medium of thousands of different species. 

 Their ramifications extend through an overwhelming mass of litera- 

 ture, not only entomological, but extending into many related sciences. 

 The solution of even a single one of these problems involves long and 

 protracted study, the following out of many related factors, interpre- 

 tation of many obscurities, the mastery of a voluminous literature and 

 finally the organizing of the completed whole into a form from which 

 a simple deduction can be drawn. Such a problem is worthy of a life's 

 effort — of years of preparation, joined to fruitful years of investigation, 

 finally to be crowned with the satisfaction of a work well done. 



It is for us to study our educational system and see if we are offering 

 the proper training for such a task. Are we offering or requiring a 

 major amount of broad and fundamental training in Physics and Chem- 

 istry, in Botany and Zoolog}^ in Physiology and Geology, in Bacteri- 

 ology and Genetics, with a minimum of requirements in our special line 

 and those of fundamental character? On such a foundation as that, 

 a lifetime of study and research can be builded, and the structure re- 

 main stable and upright. 



In many institutions of today, however, the tendency has been to 

 narrowness and specialization, to reduce the number of foundation 

 courses, and increase the number of so-called practical courses, to train 

 in the art, instead of the science. A recent catalogue outlined a course 

 with twelve studies in the major subject and only three in fundamen- 

 tals. A graduate of that course might be ready to meet almost any 

 superficial question of general entomological knowledge, but he would 

 be woefully lacking in the fundamentals that would prove the enduring 



