258 JOURNAL OF THE WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES VOL. 13, No. 12 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND. AFFILIATED 
SOCIETIES 
ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 
354TH MEETING 
The 354th meeting was held January 4th, 1923, in Room 43 of the New 
National Museum, with Vice-President A. G. Boévinc in the chair and 36 
persons present. 
Mr. Rouwer gave a résumé of the last meeting of the Executive Committee, 
stating that the Committee had approved certain changes in editorial practices 
and that beginning with Vol. 25 the inside of the back cover would be used for 
editorials and the outside for current notes. It is the plan that while these 
editorials and notes will be of timely interest, they will not contain scientific 
information which needs to be preserved. 
The report of the recording secretary, C. T. GREENE, was read and accepted. 
The report of the corresponding secretary-treasurer was read by Mr. 8. A. 
RouWER and accepted. 
The auditing committee, Messrs. A. N. Caupretn and A. G. Bovine, 
examined the Treasurer’s books and reported them correct. 
Dr. E. F. Puriuies, of the Bee Culture Laboratory, extended an invitation 
to the Society to visit the laboratory at Somerset in the near future. 
Program: 
Presidential Address by the retiring president, A. B. GAHAN on The réle of the 
taxonomist in present day entomology. Man’s first interest in insects probably 
came about through their ravages upon his person rather than upon his food 
supplies. Briefly tracing the history of the science from its possible prehis- 
toric beginning down through recorded history to the present time, he sought 
to show that the whole immense entomological structure of to-day is based 
upon the work of the taxonomist; that without the trained systematist to 
identify and describe the species of insects, the economic worker was largely 
helpless. The world-wide interest in economic entomology has resulted in 
creating a veritable army of economic workers, while the number of systema- 
tists are called upon to do the determinating work in a large group of insects 
for all of the economic workers of the world. As a consequence, the work of 
the economist often times suffers exasperating delay because he can not get 
proper identifications promptly, and at the same time the taxonomist is 
discouraged because he sees himself hopelessly swamped with routine deter- 
mination work and cut off from doing any of the constructive classification 
work which he had planned. 
The remedy would seem to be in an immediate increase of the number of 
working systematists, but unfortunately this remedy cannot be applied, be- 
cause trained systematists are not available, and if they were available it is 
very doubtful whether funds would be forthcoming from federal, state, or 
private institutions for theiremployment. The work of the taxonomist, even 
though it is the foundation of all entomological investigation, does not have 
the popular appeal which the economic phase of the work does and hence lacks 
the popular appreciation and support which it deserves. 
In discussing the address Dr. BAkrr expressed the regret that so few people 
really made use of revisionary papers after they were published, and stated 
that while it seemed that such papers should relieve the taxonomist from con- 
siderable work of identification actually they did not, and that such revisions 
apparently failed to accomplish one of the purposes for which they were written. 
