PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRD EXTOMOLOGICAL Mi:ETING 1089 



Any students desirous of knowledge for its own sake would always Mr. Fletcher, 

 be welcome and the Director would keep his eyes open and be eager 

 to secure any really promising man for the Entomological Service. 

 But I maintain that you cannot make a man an entomologist by merely 

 passing him through a course of training. Such a man will never be more 

 than a routine worker unless he has real keemiess in him to start with. 



That means that you are going against the whole system of education. Mr. Afzal Husain. 

 It must be admitted that a centralized Institute of the kind suggested 

 is very desirable. During this Jleeting we have constantly been remind- 

 ed of the very great difficulty of getting our specimens identified. We 

 have lost a large collection through enemy action and boxes full of our 

 insects have been with specialists outside India for years. We do 

 want a central place for India, an Institute such as the British Museum 

 (Natural History) is for the whole Empire, where specialists can work 

 and our insects be identified. But this scheme does not take into 

 account the pure side of the Science, I mean research in physiological 

 and embryological problems of Entomology. These problems may have 

 no immediate application but are very interesting and important. 

 Without pure science we cannot go very far with our applied science. 



I do not know whence Mr. Husain has derived this idea. The Central Mr. Fletcher. 

 Institute would of course deal with the class of problems he mentions, 

 provided that the staff could tackle them. lu cases where particular 

 problems concerned sciences outside of entomology, such a.S the trans- 

 mission of fungal disease by insects or work in which the co-operation 

 of a chemist wa.s necessary, my idea is that we should either send an 

 entomologist to work with the mycologist or chemist, or borrow a mycolo- 

 gist or chemist to work at the Entomological Institute. The exact 

 arrangements to be followed in any particular case would have to be 

 arranged at the time. My scheme allows for complete mutual colla- 

 boration with other Departments and for work on every aspect of 

 entomology, pure and applied, and I cannot understand the idea preva- 

 lent in some quarters, that the Entomologists want a Central Institute 

 merely to go inside and lock the doors and pore over specimens of insects 

 and shut themselves of? from zoological and other work. Entomology 

 is a branch of Zoology just in tlie same way as Zoology is a branch of 

 the Natural History of a hundred and fifty years ago. Yet we do not 

 hear nowadays of a botanist or a mineralogist claimmg that Zoology 

 is a part of his work because he is equally a student of Natural History. 

 We Entomologists merely claim that we are speciahsts in a Science, 

 which is big enough nowadays to stand on its own legs as a science 

 separate from Zoology, and that we know what is required to be done 

 and we prefer to do it in our own way. 



