16 THE ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF ENTOMOLOGY. 
led, many years ago, to the erection of a State Entomological 
department, issuing numerous publications. In more than one 
of the separate States are found similar organizations ; and in 
every case the information promulgated is of a highly practical 
character, the result of exhaustive scientific investigation, com- 
bined with carefully-conducted remedial experiments. But 
valuable as these institutions are, the American agriculturists 
are beginning to agitate for the addition of economic entomology 
to the curriculum of State education. A good illustration of this 
movement is to be found in the following resolution, passed in 
November, 1883, by the State of California Fruit-growers Con- 
vention :—‘‘ Whereas the fruit and vine interests bid fair to 
become the leading industries of the State,—resolved, ‘ that we, 
in convention assembled, as representing the fruit-growers of this 
State, do urgently and earnestly request, pray, and by right 
demand, the introduction into our public schools of the study of 
Economic Entomology.’ ”’ 
T am sure that some steps in this direction should be taken in 
Queensland, where the cultivation of the soil and the utilization 
of its natural grasses involve the leading industries of the colony; 
but our Government have got to be educated up to the point of 
thoroughly apprehending the importance of the subject. It 
will be better, therefore, if in any movement made we commence 
by “ earnestly requesting,” and relegate any assertion of a “right 
todemand”’to a future period of our history; when popular require- 
ment has left the track of constructing railways to everywhere 
and nowhere, of the building of court-houses, and the establish- 
ment of town clocks, and when we come to require at the hands 
of our representative men measures for the more material de- 
velopment of the country’s resources in directions qvhich will 
foster and aid its industries, and thus directly add to the pros- 
perity of the people and to the wealth of the country. 
I venture to suggest to the Council of the Society, whether 
the first attention of the Government to this grave neglect 
