82 THE FLORIDA BUGGIST 
keep up the supply of new ideas, principles and knowledge for the 
workers in applied science, the investigations in pure science 
must be continued. In other words, if new ideas, new principles, 
new facts were not being brought out continually, the worker in 
applied science, including economic entomology, would soon be 
at a standstill. : 
As an illustration of the importance of isolated and apparently 
insignificant facts and principles, the development of another 
science appeals to me, and I believe that this also lends itself bet- 
ter as an illustration. 
As an example of the slow accretion of knowledge, sometimes 
accidental, sometimes fostered studiously by individuals, later 
by groups of men and students at universities and other seats 
of learning, and finally by institutions established for the pur- 
pose, until the few scattered facts, at first apparently useless and 
largely curiosities, became developed into a system of related 
facts and principles, I love to think of the science of electricity 
and magnetism. From static electricity, generated by rubbing a 
piece of amber (a fact known to the ancient Greeks 600 B. C.), 
to the modern telephone, the dynamo and motor, the X-ray, and 
finally, the wireless, is a far cry. However, any one who knows 
something of the facts, I am sure, will subscribe to the statement 
. that the modern electric locomotive, for instance, was presaged 
by the apparently trivial and curious electrical phenomena known 
to the Greeks, the inventions of the Italians, Galvani and Volta, 
and later in the coils of wire and magnets of Faraday. I love 
to think of it, that the germ of the electric motor and dynamo 
was present in the very simple experiment of the deflection of a 
magnetic needle by means of an electric current passed thru a 
wire near it. This simple experiment first demonstrated the 
relationship between magnetism and electricity, and while ap- 
parently useless knowledge then, was a ready-made fact for 
Faraday and others, so that today we have all kinds of electrical 
apparatus and machinery serving mankind. 
Coming back to our own subject of entomology, the classifica- 
tions of insects and the studies on structure, particularly of the 
mouth-parts and their uses, and the manner in which insects 
breathe, were the foundation on which those who were devising 
methods for destroying insects could build. While no doubt 
successful attempts at destroying injurious insects were made 
by those having no particular knowledge of insects, the process 
could only be carried on with understanding by those knowing 
