23 



Mr. Banks remarked that he would like the members to express 

 their opinion as to what they considered desirable in the wa}' of indices. 

 He stated that it was difficult to obtain all the references in news- 

 papers, and thought that those published by agricultural weeklies were 

 hardly worth the trouble of indexing. 



Mr. Osborn stated that he thought this to be a very important part 

 of entomological litei'ature for the practical farmer and horticulturist. 

 Many of these men do not get the publications from the experiment 

 stations and they depend upon these agricultural articles. While it 

 seemed a very thankless sort of task, he thought that an entomologist 

 should be willing to attend to this feature of the work for the benefit 

 of the class of persons mentioned. Mr. Osborn further remarked that 

 he had sometimes found himself looking in a plant index for an insect's 

 name, but had usually discovered his error in a very short time. 



Mr. Felt spoke of the annoyance which he experienced in referring 

 to separate indices, such as is found in the Entomologists' Monthly 

 Magazine, which has a number of special indices; and, while he did 

 not know the experience of other entomologists in regard to this 

 point, in his own experience he had found the food-plant index inval- 

 uable. 



Mr. Banks stated that at the present time a great man}^ genera had 

 been duplicated in botany and zoology, and it was sometimes difficult 

 to tell whether a plant or an insect was referred to. 



Mr. Felt replied that he thought the name of the plant in connec- 

 tion with the insect attecting it is very easily indicated and he thought 

 there was very little reason for separating the plant and insect indices. 



Mr. Hopkins stated that his experience had been similar to Mr. 

 Felt's in looking up references. It is somewhat confusing to turn to 

 two indices, and he thought the suggestion by the president was in 

 harmony with progress in this line. In his opinion, the host-plant 

 index should be included with the other, and he urged the importance 

 of both the common and the scientific names of host plants in the index. 

 The trouble suggested by Mr. Banks could be avoided by using com- 

 mon names. By using the most popular common name, followed by 

 the scientific name, it would be at once apparent which species was 

 referred to. 



Mr. Hopkins further remarked that in reference to indexing news- 

 paper articles it seemed a waste of time. If it is some well-known 

 agricultural journal, like the Countr}^ Gentleman or some of those 

 papers of which permanent files are kept and good indices made, it 

 might be worth while; but many of our agricultural papers, as well 

 as newspapers, have no index, and a file of the paper is not kept. He 

 did not consider it of much use to refer to these, from the fact that 

 the reference could not be looked up. Furthei'more, most of these 

 newspaper articles are simply summaries of what has alread}^ been 

 published elsewhere. 



