SCOPE AND STA'iUS OP ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY. 11 



claimed to have made. With the wide newspaper comment result- 

 ing from the remarkable nature of the discovery he is made to appear 

 a very remarkable man. People of a community in which lives 

 an honest and patient seeker for the truth look upon the latter as 

 a failure when such brilliance is flashed in their faces, though their 

 humble fellow-citizen investigator may be worth a dozen of the sort 

 with the manufactured reputation. He must keep his temper, how- 

 ever, since his word, though worth its weight in gold, will not be 

 received until the sensational claims for the so-called discovery are 

 exploded in publications as sensational, or more so, than those an- 

 nouncing the discovery. Economic entomology has not suffered as 

 much in this way as have some related lines of investigation, and it 

 is fortunate that it is so, since the correction of these wild stories 

 costs energy and time that can be better occupied. Such stories are 

 to be discouraged by every means in our power, since their final 

 effect is to destroy confidence of the public in the results of our 

 labors. To take from the average man his belief in a thing having 

 a touch of the wonderful about it and which, therefore, he really 

 likes to believe, always places real results along the same line under 

 his suspicion thereafter. 



OUR OPPORTUNITIES FOR INVESTIGATION ARE EXCEPTIONAL. 



With increased facilities for publication we have had a very satis- 

 factory improvement of late in the opportunities for experiment and 

 observation along the lines of our favorite study. If we wish to 

 observe the diseases of young trees, the general interest of nursery- 

 men, stimulated by the demand for healthy stock which has been 

 encouraged by State inspection laws, helps such observations along 

 instead of discouraging them, as was sometimes done formerly from 

 shortsightedness and selfish motives. If we Avish to test the effect of 

 treatment of any kind we have our experiment farms, where we can 

 arrange carefully planned experiments with the knowledge that our 

 results will not be lost to us by the carelessness or incompetence of 

 others, as sometimes happens when one attempts experiments on 

 premises not under his control. Most of us have some funds at our 

 disposal for the purchase of tools, books, equipment for laboratories, 

 insectaries, and the like, so that we can at this opening up of a new 

 year felicitate ourselves on the enjoyment of privileges not pos- 

 sessed by naturalists at any other period of the world's history. I 

 wish it could be said also that the salaries paid us were commensurate 

 with the labor performed and the self-denial that must be exercised 

 by anyone who devotes his life to such work. It is not a money- 

 making profession, and at the end of his working days the official 

 entomologist is left on the world to make shift as best he can on the 



