mitigate their attacks upon crops. This traiuiTig-, liowever, is essen- 

 tially necessary in the same way that leariiinj? the alphabet is necessary 

 for one who wishes to read or speak accnrately ; but it is beyond this 

 pointthat theadvantages of our association may be recpguized. There is 

 not, perhaps, any single line of practical science, certainly not one ap- 

 proaching it in the importance of the results attained, in which students 

 have to work so much alone and cut of!" from companions of congenial 

 tastes. Marvel at it as we may, we, who know the exfpiisite beauty 

 and sustaining charms of the insect world, cannotbut acknowledge that 

 entomology is not a popular study, and although in this respect there 

 is a gradual change taking place for the better, still all the same it is 

 with feelings akin to amusement and patronage that the ordinary 

 farmer of the country allows himself to listen to arguments that there 

 is after all some use iu studying the habits of insects. 



Probably most of us present have occasionally had the opportunity 

 of addressing farmers' institute meetings, and know well that al- 

 though, after the meeting is over, there are invariablj^ more inquiries 

 about common insect crop pests than anj" other subject which may have 

 been discussed, and when the meeting breaks up it is always the ento- 

 mologist who is detained 1 o answer the questions of those who did not 

 like to stand up and speak before the others; yet for all this, prob- 

 ably most of you will recognize the extreme similarity which exists 

 between the expectant smile which meets you from every part of the 

 audience when you are introduced to speak on insects in a new locality 

 and that which greets the announcement of the high-class comic songs 

 which are usually dispensed on those occasions. You also know the 

 necessity, and have probably been often asked by the chairman at 

 these meetings in so many words, to begin with some joke "to catch 

 the attention of the audience." An appeal must then be made to their 

 pockets, and you must remind them of the crops destroyed and dollars 

 lost by depredations of pests which levy tribute every year, as the 

 turnip tiea-beetle, cutworms, potato-beetles, etc. 



You explain the simplicity of many remedies and the great saving 

 that will follow their application. They had not thought of these 

 things; gradually the smiles die out and the other extreme of serious- 

 ness is reached. They awaken now; with bodies leaning forward and 

 heads raised they drink iu every word; their eyes brighten and their 

 mouths gradually o})en with wonder at the losses they have suffered 

 and might have prevented had they but known of these simple things 

 before. It touches them to the quick to be told that 10 cents' worth of 

 Paris green would have saved their crop of gooseberries or currants; 

 have done away with the necessity of sowing their turnips two or three 

 times at a hundred times the cost; that 10 cents expended in spraying 

 m apple or i)lum tree would have given them a return of three or four 

 iollars' worth of good fruit ; that by simply wrapping a piece of news- 

 paper around their young cabbages or tomatoes at the time of setting 



