20 Journal of the Mitchell Society [December 



work of Swammerdam in the seventeenth century, who worked with- 

 out a compound microscope or a microtome. Our knowledge of the 

 ecological relations is largely based on superficial studies of the life 

 histories of isolated species and all the rest is sweeping generalizations 

 that are almost certain to fail in the acid test of real ecological experi- 

 ments. Our knowledge of insect vectors of human, animal, and plant 

 diseases are equally poorly grounded on the knowledge that the tsetse 

 fly carries sleeping sickness, that the malarial mosquito carries ma- 

 laria, that the cattle tick (not an insect) carries Texas fever, and a 

 few other cases from which we generalize often wisely, if not too well. 



We are often guilty of orating, sometimes rather loudly, I am 

 afraid, about the damage done by the gypsy moth, or the boll weevil 

 or what not, but do we even stop to ask ourselves about the remarkable 

 interplay of physiological processes between plant and insect or the 

 ecological relations between the insect and the host of conditions that 

 surround it? And the echoes answer, "Do we?" 



If this then is the condition among our professional zoologists 

 (I believe entomologists are still regarded as zoologists by the layman, 

 if not so regarded by his fellow zoologists), what is the condition among 

 other scientists, and other folks in general, — that great class to which 

 we scientists refer frequently, and not without condescension, as the 

 lay minds, as something separate and entirely distinct from our minds 

 which are denoted as academic minds. It is in the hope that Tmay 

 be able to educate the lay mind that this paper has been prepared. 

 And for fear that some of you may miss the drift of my remarks, I 

 hasten to remind you that you are the lay mind, and to add that I am 

 not exactly clear as to just why you are the lay mind or just what 

 makes my mind, entomologically speaking, an academic mind, while 

 from the standpoint of the chemist or the physicist or the botanist or 

 what not my mind is removed from its temporary and somewhat in- 

 secure pedestal and is laid at the base and becomes perforce a lay mind. 

 Perhaps I would feel just as well and you would have more respect for 

 what I have to say if I did not inquire too closely into this phase of the 

 subject but hasten on to tell you something about bugs, as I see that 

 you are all sitting somewhat breathlessly with open mouths, if not 

 with open minds, to learn something about this field that we call en- 

 tomology and about this age that we call the age of insects. 



Before I proceed, however, I must warn you that I am not an en- 

 tomologist, let alone a zoologist, although I believe that is the title 



