SCOPE AND STATUS OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY. 7 



on the species of mosquitoes — a study of the life history and habits 

 of each, a knowledge of their structure, a knowledge of the life his- 

 tories of the parasites for which some of them serve as intermediate 

 hosts, and a knowledge of the precise relations which these parasites 

 sustain to mosquitoes. Because of this discovery the entomologist is 

 compelled to acquire knowledge — systematic, ecological, and morpho- 

 logical — and to delve to some extent into the life history and struc- 

 ture of organisms very remotely related to insects. 



Again, a study of the structure of an insect has more than once 

 furnished a clue to means of checking its injuries when everything 

 else failed. A single fact concerning a life history has likewise 

 sometimes placed it within our powder to avoid mischief from which 

 we had hitherto been unable to protect ourselves. To meet the re- 

 quirements of his subject, the economic entomologist must, in a word, 

 be an all-round naturalist. He must know species well. He must 

 know anatomy, minute and microscopic. He must know" insect life 

 histories as they are known to no one else. He must know^ remedies 

 for insect injuries and be able to apply them successfully. He must 

 be a skillful microscopist, and should know the literature of ento- 

 mology. If he has acquired this knowledge and skill, he is surely 

 as broad, as a man and an entomologist, as he whose work is confined 

 solely to the " i:)ure science'' of the subject; and it may be easily 

 maintained that economic entomology as here understood is a much 

 broader field and requires as much talent of the same and different 

 sorts for its successful pursuit as that emplo^'ed by him wdio studies 

 simply insect taxonomy, insect embryology, or insect morphology, 

 valuable though the results of such studies may be. 



All science is '' pure," whether it is applied or not. It may be 

 suspected that some of the disfavor bestowed upon economic ento- 

 mology in the early days of its history in this country arose from the 

 fact that economic entomologists w^ere often more of the practical 

 order than of the scientific ; w^ere, in other words, somewhat deficient 

 in scientific knowledge, though this was not true of Riley, Fitch, or 

 Harris, three great pioneer economic entomologists who have had no 

 superiors in any country. Yet it must be said of these men that they 

 were primarily scientists, whose chief interest lay in working out 

 life histories. Remedies for insect injuries as employed by farmers 

 and fruit growers were studied by them, and what appeared to be 

 the best were recommended in their writings, but these remedies 

 were not experimented with in the thoroughgoing manner that has 

 of late become the fashion. This is not to their discredit. They 

 were able men, who felt impelled to do the work most worth doing 

 in their day. The ])rol)lems to be solved now are different, and the 

 opportunities to solve them in a satisfactory manner are better 

 than they were wlien these men wrote. 



