PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRD ENTOMOLOGICAL MEETING 1035 



subjects, to point out how far the existing publications satisfy the needs 

 of different classes of readers and to discuss whether there is room for 

 a publication solely_ devoted to entomology in India. 



Readers of entomological publications may be placed under two 

 categories : — (1) entomologists and (2) non-entomologists, i.e., the lay 

 public. In the first category are included the workers in as well as 

 outside India. The departmental Memoirs and Bulletins, and the 

 journals dealing with zoological matters generally, such as the Journals 

 of the Asiatic Society and the Bombay Natural History Society and 

 Records of the Indian Museum at Calcutta are accessible to this class. 

 All these publications afford ample facilities for publishing all communi- 

 cations on entomology, but as none of them, except the Departmental 

 Memoirs and Bulletins, is solely devoted to entomology, the compara- 

 tively small entomological contributions are buried among the more- 

 voluminous matters dealing with general zoology. Besides, these 

 publications are hardly available to the Provincial Entomological Assist- 

 ants working in the mofussil. The Departmental Memoirs and Bulletins 

 are meant to be records of work which is more or less complete and which 

 is either of too popular or too technical a nature. The time has there- 

 fore arrived to consider whether it will be useful to have a periodical 

 publication solely devoted to Entomology, in which reports of observa- 

 tions and investigations, of trials of preventive and remedial experi- 

 ments, notes on life-history and similar matters, which cannot by them- 

 selves form the subjects for separate Bulletins and Memoirs, can be 

 published. Such matters are extremely important and in fact form the 

 bricks with which the edifice of Economic Entomology in India has to 

 be built up. At present only a very small proportion of such observa- 

 tions, etc., is actually recorded. Out of this recorded matter again 

 only a small proportion is actually published and that too in such a 

 scattered manner, in Departmental leaflets, annual administration 

 reports, provincial year-books, and the pages of the Asiatic Society and 

 Bombay Natural History Society's JonrmU in India as well as of various 

 journals outside India, that it is hardly accessible to all workers. Even 

 if a worker is enthusiastic enough to collect this scattered information 

 from all these various and not easily accessible sources, much of it is 

 necessarily brief and incomplete and not as valuable as it may be and 

 ought to be, because in administration reports and even in the annual 

 reports of the Entomological Department much room cannot be provided 

 for detailed treatment. 



Mere records of catches are useful ; descriptions of the methods used 

 in collecting are highly interesting ; observations of habits in actual 

 field conditions in nature are extremely valuable ; and the workers 



