32 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 12 



this enormous mass is to be assimilated and profitably used. More 

 funds of this association should be used for this purpose and more in- 

 fluence brought to bear, on sources of publication, so that offerings of 

 this kind could find ready acceptance. The bibliography of Economic 

 Entomology should be kept up to date, and arrangements made to 

 bring the valuable contributions into a single bibliography. 



The committee on publications might well be charged with the 

 problem of reviewing past literature and fixing credit for at least major 

 discoveries in our science. By a system of sub-committees and the 

 use of specialists who already have a large part of this information, the 

 task could be accomplished and every worker immeasurably benefited 

 by the knowledge. The committee might well adopt the policy of 

 requesting each living worker to set forth his own contributions to 

 knowledge, asking him to go farther and classify them into major and 

 minor groups. Overlapping claims and inaccuracies could be worked 

 out, and the whole unified and correlated, in such a way as to make it 

 highly valuable to every worker. It would require a certain amount 

 of time and effort on the part of each individual, but there is, possibly, 

 no more valuable piece of work that the ordinary individual could 

 undertake, than to calmly sit down and measure the value of his own 

 productions in a critical and impartial manner. 



We need, also, to be more generous in our credit to assistants and 

 helpers. Credit of this kind, joint authorship, or specific acknowledg- 

 ment does not, in the least, detract from the credit of the individual, 

 but rather enhances it. The days of feudalism, of the master and slave, 

 are gone. It is pleasant to note that the customs of the Dark Ages are 

 rapidly disappearing, and that the contributions of the third genera- 

 tion of our scientists are practically free from criticism in this respect. 



There are many of the fundamental questions of the future that 

 involve the effect of insect attack upon the host plant, whether it is 

 the effect of egg deposition or of feeding puncture or both, whether it 

 is mere mechanical injury or something injected, or whether the insect 

 is a carrier of a definite disease. One plant disease is already known 

 to be transmitted only by the puncture of a specific insect, others 

 appear to be specifically transmitted, while others are transmitted by 

 a number of insects or by other methods. Here is a tremendously 

 important and interesting field, as yet almost unworked. 



All of these problems require the cooperation of the Plant Pathol- 

 ogist and Physiologist, and for these and many other reasons, our 

 relations with these societies should be the most cordial and mutually 

 helpful. Many of the problems of the State Entomologist involve 

 pathological and physiological factors, and in all of this work, the 

 cooperation and assistance of these plant workers should be sought. 



