14 Annals Entomological Society of America [Vol. VIII, 
preserving life and health than it is to induce the threatened vic- 
tims to make use of them effectively. So true is this, even with 
respect to malaria, that Sir Ronald Ross has said, in an address 
delivered in London a month ago, that although fifteen years 
have elapsed since the essential discoveries were made, not more 
than atenth part of the possible benefit to human life has been 
effected, and that this is only because mankind has not put its 
heart effectively into the business. In the purely economic 
field also this is equally true, and in my own state further prog- 
ress in the control of the chinch-bug and the corn root-aphis 
seems to be blocked, as by an impassible stone wall, by the 
disinclination of the people most immediately concerned either 
to do voluntarily or to permit themselves to be coerced into 
doing the necessary right thing in their emergency. They 
would rather do as they like to their ruin than to be commanded, 
and perhaps compelled, to do as they ought for the salvation 
of themselves and their communities. 
Both of my foregoing illustrations, one of a complete and 
the other of an incomplete investigation, show us how thoroughly 
ecological applied entomology is in its distinguishing characters; 
but they do not sufficiently distinguish specific ecological detail 
from general method and principle, or give us any convincing 
evidence of the advantages which applied entomology may hope 
for in the work of the general ecologist who seeks only to develop 
his subject in the broad way, with no special thought of useful 
applications. 
For this we need only to recall what it is that the general 
ecologist undertakes to do. For us as students of applicable 
entomology and of the means and methods of its application, 
the question is, in general terms, whether it would help us 
in our special work if we knew in advance, or could readily 
learn, the essential facts concerning the environment of the 
animals or plants in which-we are especially interested; if we 
knew the topography of the environment, its hydrography, and 
its climate, as these are now and as they were before civilized 
occupancy; if we knew about the water supply, the drainage, the 
past and the present levels of the water table, the soils and their 
distribution, and the effects upon these of occupancy and use, 
present, past, and prospective; if we knew the details of the 
ecological structure of the region, and the probability of changes 
in such structure under gradually intensified human use; and 
