200 



foregoing you will naturally draw the couclusiou that I do not at present 

 favor any time being wasted on the subject at the State stations, since 

 Congress declined to put a duty on " raw" silk — a striking illustration 

 of the inconsistencies of the tariff" schedule. 



LEGISLATION. 



The amount of legislation in different countries that has of late years 

 been deemed necessary or sufficiently important, in view of injurious 

 insects, is a striking evidence of the increased attention paid to applied 

 entomology; and while modern legislation of this kind has been, on the 

 whole, far more intelligent than similar efforts in years gone by, many 

 of the laws passed have nevertheless been unwise, futile, and imprac- 

 ticable, and even unnecessarily oppressive to other interests. The chief 

 danger here is the intervention of politics or political methods. Expert 

 counsel should guide our legislators and the steps taken should be thor- 

 ough in order to be effective. We have had of late years in Germany 

 very good evidence of the excellent results flowing from thorough 

 methods, and the recent legislation in Massachusetts against the gipsy 

 moth {Oo.neria dispar)^ which at one time threatened to become farcical, 

 has, fortunately, proved more than usually successful, the commission 

 appointed to deal with the subject having worked with energy and fol- 

 lowed competent advice. 



PUBLICATION. 



On the question of publication of the results of our labors it is per- 

 haps premature to dwell at lengtb. Each of the experiment stations is 

 publishing its own bulletins and reports quite independently of tbe 

 others, but after a uniform plan, recommended by the Association with 

 which we meet here, and with few exceptions that have come to my 

 notice, another important recommendation of the same Association — 

 that these j)ublications shall be void of all personal matter — has been 

 kept in mind. The office of Experiment Stations at Washington is 

 doing what it can with the means at coumiand to further the general 

 work by issuing the Experiment Station Record, devoted chiefly to 

 digests of the State station bulletins. There is a serious question in 

 my mind as to the utility of State digests by the national department 

 of results already published extensively by the different States, and dis- 

 tributed, under Government frauk, to all similar institutions and to 

 whomsoever is interested enough to ask for them. Such digests may 

 or may not be intelligently made, and, even under the most favorable 

 circumstances, will hardly serve any other purpose than as references 

 to the original articles, and this could undoubtedly be done more sat- 

 isfactorily to the stations and to tbe people at large by general and 

 classifli^d indexes to all the State documents, made as full as possible 

 and issued at stated intervals. Only a small proportion of the bulletins 



