288 Proceedings of Indiana Academy of Science 



of the earth uninhabitable to man, while their continued attacks on 

 certain crops makes farming hazardous and in some sections unprofitable. 



According to the latest authorities there are 470,000 described 

 species of insects and no less an authority than the late Dr. David 

 Sharp is responsible for the following statement: "The largest insects 

 scarcely exceed in bulk a mouse or a wren, while the smallest are 

 almost imperceptible to the naked eye, and yet the larger part of the 

 animal matter existing on the lands of the globe is in all probability 

 locked up in the forms of insects. Taken as a whole, they are the most 

 successful of all the forms of terrestrial animals". The numbers of 

 insects are beyond computation. Fortunately there are many checks on 

 the increase of insects and probably only a little change in nature's 

 balance of power would be sufficient to make the earth a desert, or 

 as was so aptly put by one eminent scientist "If the insects would 

 quit fighting among themselves, they would overwhelm the whole ver- 

 tebrate series". In his recent address as retiring president of the 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr. L. 0. Howard 

 emphasized these points in the following words: "Vertebrates, culminat- 

 ing in man, have acquired the bodily structures which, with man guided 

 by the equally acquired intelligence, has enabled him to accomplish 

 the marvels which we see in our daily existence. And, too, the Articu- 

 lates have in the course of the ages been modified and perfected in their 

 stz'ucture and in their biology until their many appendages have be- 

 come perfect tools adapted in the most complete way to the needs of the 

 species; until their power of existing and of multiplying enormously 

 under the most extraordinary variety of conditions, of subsisting suc- 

 cessfully upon an extraordinaiy variety of food, has become so per- 

 fected and their instincts have become so developed that the culminating 

 type, the insects, has become the most powerful rival of the culminating 

 vertebrate type, man". 



When we speak of entomology nowadays we usually refer to eco- 

 nomic or applied entomology. That we are beginning to realize that 

 insects are among our most important I'ivals in nature is evidenced by 

 this understanding of entomology and by the additional fact that the 

 war against insects has become a world-wide movement in which 

 the United States leads. In the States the federal government has 

 a large force of workers, the Bureau of Entomology suppoi'ting 400 

 workers, and each state has its corps of expert investigators and every 

 agricultural college its corps of instructors in entomology. In the Amer- 

 ican Association of Economic Entomologists alone there are nearly 800 

 members, practically all of whom are working on one or more phases of 

 economic entomology. This development has ccme in the short space 

 of one hundred years and principally in the last (luarter of this century. 

 Even as late as the 80's and even later entomology was considered a 

 hobby, and the entomologist held up to ridicule. I recall a story by 

 Dr. Leland O. Howard to the effect that in the fall of 1878, on his 

 way from Ithaca to Washington to accept his first appointment as 

 assistant entomologist in the U. S. Department of Agriculture, he stopped 

 in New York to call on relatives. Among them was his grandmother 



