February, '19] DISCUSSION of presidential address 49 



not been noted by any of the modern workers on the louse problem. 

 There were a few references many years ago, in which there was some 

 mention of fever in connection with lice bites, but there was no signifi- 

 cance attached to it. 



Vice-President W. C. O'Kane presiding. 



Mr. W. C. O'Kane: We will now take up the discussion of the 

 presidential address. 



Mr. T. J. Headlee: I have been much impressed with the ad- 

 dress of our president. He is advocating fundamental training along 

 biological lines for persons who would enter the field of economic en- 

 tomology. In this he does not apparently agree with many of the 

 addresses and discussions hitherto presented to this association deal- 

 ing with the problem of training economic entomologists. The at- 

 titude taken in many previous papers on this subject has been that the 

 man prepared for economic entomology should be thoroughly trained 

 in agriculture and in the direct technical side of his profession, the idea 

 apparently being that unless he is familiar to a great extent with eco- 

 nomic insects he is not in a position to measure up with men in other 

 lines of scientific agriculture. As I see it, this is only a part of the 

 movement in scientific agriculture which has taken place during the 

 last ten years, the object and aim of which has been to produce men 

 trained in the technical side of the science, without much regard to 

 their preparation in fundamental science and the humanities. 



It seems to me that this address of our president marks the swing in 

 the opposite direction. I may say at once that I am in entire sym- 

 pathy with this change of front. 



In a few instances in the past ten years addresses have been de- 

 livered advocating training of a similar sort, but the bulk of teaching 

 opinion has seemed to be on the other side. 



From the beginning of economic entomology until the present and 

 probably to a distant date in the future, the tendency to study the life 

 history of economic insects, without regard to the nature of the en- 

 vironment in which they live, has been and will continue to be very 

 paramount. 



Professor Sanderson in his address as president of this association at 

 Minneapolis some years ago advocated the idea of studying the eco- 

 nomic insect not only from the standpoint of life history l)ut also from 

 the standpoint of its ecological relations and suggested that a standing 

 committee on entomological research be authorized, the pm-pose of 

 which should i)e to hold up ideals of economic entomological research. 

 With the passage of time the activity of this committee became limited 

 to the preparation of a list of the projects on which the members of the 

 association are engaged. This, according to my view, is a mistaken 



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