February, '19] DISCUSSION OF PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 53 



matter serious thought of what was the method of science. In talking 

 with a good many men and experienced scientific workers, I have come 

 to the conclusion that if a great many of us had that foundation point 

 of view which we get by considering the logic of science, it would be 

 worth a great deal to us. I think eveiy student ought to have some 

 training along that line. 



There is another matter on which I want to touch briefly, that is 

 this matter for organization in putting over some of these big ento- 

 mological undertakings. The boll-weevil has been referred to and 

 that is a matter which has always interested me, because I was actively 

 engaged in combating it some years ago. 



The start, in a way, of the big extension movement in agriculture, 

 which we have today, was from Dr. S. A. Knapp's work in Texas, in 

 trying to fight the boll-weevil. He didn't know anything technically 

 about the boll-weevil, but he was a mighty canny student of human 

 nature and he demonstrated a method of fighting the boll-weevil which 

 developed into the demonstration method that has gone on, until we 

 have our present agricultural extension system. I don't mean to say 

 that was the only basis of our present extension work but it was one 

 of the largest factors in it. Now then, why didn't we as entomologists 

 do that? Why didn't we show the people of the South how to fight 

 the boll-weevil and why was it that we didn't get one job across instead 

 of letting some other people do it for us? I have often thought of that. 



I simply cite that because it has been mentioned and it is such an 

 historic instance. The point is that today, as has been pointed out, 

 the science is getting so large that there must be specialization. It is 

 perfectly useless, in my humble judgment, to put a man who is a nat- 

 ural research man and who has been trained for minute laboratory 

 research in charge of a big extension job. Occasionally you get a 

 genius who can do anything, but most men aren't built that way. 



Most men are better at some particular line, research, extension, or 

 teaching. And it seems to me that that must be recognized, and that 

 in any of these big undertakings we must make a study of the human 

 nature factor and we must put the man in charge of that line of work 

 who is willing to devote himself to that sort of thing. He may be a 

 relatively mediocre research man, but if he is associated with a research 

 man and he knows how to take the results of research to the people and 

 "get them over," as we say, he is as valuable to science as the other 

 man, because after all no piece of investigation is done until it is actu- 

 ally put into practical operation. An experiment or a demonstration 

 is never done until the people actually use it, and if it isn't worth using 

 the investigation, in so far, is incomplete, because it has not produced 

 practical results in use. So I think there must be greater division of 

 labor, which, of course, is coming about ver>' rapidly. 



