52 Journal of the ]\Iitchell Society [December 



ficient political reasons I could have an appointment to West Point if 

 I could i)ass the examinations. I was persuaded not to do this by the 

 Superintendent because, said he, "All the great wars have been fought, 

 and you are not the type of young man that would care to hang around 

 an army liarracks all your days." Needless to say I agree that I am 

 hardly that type of man but I also imagine that very few of the grad- 

 uates of West Point in the class of 1907 spent many days hanging 

 around army barracks from April 1917 to November 1919. I remem- 

 ber telling this story to my old teacher of Zoology and he said that 

 lichen he told his Professor of Natural Sciences that he expected to go 

 into Zoology his teacher tried to discourage him. "For," said he, 

 "now that Darwin has announced his theory of Natural Selection there 

 is nothing left for the zoologist to do." 



I cite these two instances because they illustrate so well an all too 

 prevalent opinion in all fields, a feeling that is far too prevalent in a 

 new field like entomology where the pioneers have been over the 

 ground and harvested the first rich harvest not realizing that these 

 same pioneers have left many corners untouched and have left abun- 

 dant harvests yet to be garnered. That such a feeling should be 

 still prevalent in applied entomology in the face of such enormous 

 losses as have been pointed out above or in the face of the fact that 

 tons of honey go to waste each year and bees are needed to gather it , 

 is indeed hard to realize. That such a feeling should be prevalent in 

 pure entomology when we realize how Morgan has advanced the 

 science of genetics by breeding fruit flies, or when we consider what 

 there is yet to learn about the anatomy, the physiology or the ecology 

 of even our most common species is hard to understand. Except per- 

 haps there is the notion that the pioneers had an easy time when we 

 think that, no matter which way they turned, they were almost cer- 

 tain to stumble into unexplored fields. While if we want to be sure 

 that our work is not simply a repetition of something that someone 

 else has done much better we must wade through a mass of literature 

 often mountain high to discover nothing at the bottom. Forgetting 

 for the time being that they had no great laboratories fitted with the 

 finest of microscopes, microtomes, ovens, cameras and utensils of all 

 kinds, that they had no libraries, no collections and very little apprecia- 

 tion. While we have all of these things. Forgetting that most of the 

 pioneers had to steal their time for research from their families or from 

 their sleep. While all that it is necessary for us to do is to steal the 

 time from our classes or other official duties. 



