18 Annals Entomological Society of America [Vol. VIII, 
one of these so-called root-worms differs so widely in its life 
history from another species of the same genus, living in the 
same territory but upon another food plant, as to suggest an 
actual fitting of it in, by a process of natural selection, to the 
period left vacant for it by its two companion root-worms of 
the strawberry field. 
Ecological succession has also its points of contact with 
economic entomology, as is being shown at this very meeting 
of the Association of Economic Entomologists, in a paper by 
one of our leading zoological ecologists. 
If, now, I may apply my own description of ecology, as 
inclusive not only of all kinds and grades of interaction between 
men and insects but also of all interactions among men which 
have insect activities as their cause, I may conclude this out- 
line of my subject by brief reference to the things which our 
countrymen ought to be induced to do in each other’s interest 
as well as in their own. The great obstacle to a reasonable 
success is, as I have already intimated, a deficiency of the com- 
munity spirit in the American community. If our people had, 
as a mass, a fair equivalent for the disposition to social co- 
operation, to social service, to social sacrifice when sacrifice 
is needed, that is exhibited by some of their insect competitors, 
our conquest of the insect world would be relatively easy. In 
that case, whenever a community was threatened with a de- 
structive insect outbreak, it would react unanimously, effec- 
tively, and at once to the warnings of its posted sentinels— 
its official economic entomologists. Knowing itself to be 
without the inherited automatic machinery of co6dperative 
action which makes a hive of bees or a colony of ants a unit when 
its welfare is threatened, it would provide itself in advance with 
artificial substitutes for this constitutional system. It would 
equip itself and its progeny with the necessary practical knowl- 
edge, 1t would cultivate by all possible means the necessary 
public spirit, and then it would surround itself with laws and 
ordinances and provide itself with officers, to the end that it 
might be constrained to do, even against the will of many of 
its individuals, what under like circumstances a family of social 
wasps would do because it could not help itself. Taking a 
lesson, in other words, from insect ecology, it would contrive 
to do by the aid of rational intelligence, forethought, and will 
