ENTOMOLOGY AND THE WAR+ 
By Dr. L. O. Howargp, 
Chief, Bureau of Entomology, U. 8S. Depariment of Agriculture. 
Rather frequently during the past 18 months, meeting friends, 
they have said, by way of casual conversation, “I imagine that the 
war does not affect your work especially.” They did not stop to 
think of the very great importance of insects in the carriage of certain 
diseases, the ease and frequency of such transfer becoming intensi- 
fied wherever great bodies of men are brought together, as in great 
construction projects, and especially in great armies. They did not 
realize, entirely aside from the especial diseases of this character met 
with by the troops in Africa, Mesopotamia, and in the region of 
Salonica, that even upon the western front, in a good temperate 
climate, warfare under trench conditions was rendered much more 
difficult by reason of the prevalence of trench fever which investiga- 
tions during the latter part of the war showed to be carried by the 
body-louse. 
Moreover, with the same lack of thought which leads people to 
ignore the importance of the officers of the Quartermaster’s Depart- 
ment as compared with those of the fighting arms of the service, they 
failed to consider, not only how damage by insects to growing crops 
influences the food supply of armies, but also how greatly grains and 
other foods stored for shipment to the front or on the way to the 
front may be reduced in bulk by the work of the different grain 
weevils and other insects affecting stored foods. In addition, they 
did not think of the damage done by insects to the timber which 
enters into the building of ships, into the manufacture of wings for 
the airplanes, and that which is used for oars, the handles of picks 
and spades, and which even occurs in such wooden structures and 
implements after they have been made—in the implements, not when 
in actual use, but rather in the period of storage and shipping. A 
striking example of this latter damage is seen in the history of the 
Crimean War, when England, after a long period of peace, provided 
the army which she sent to the Crimea with long-stored tools for the 
sappers and miners, and it was found that the handles crumbled 
through the work of Lyctus beetles. 
1 Reprinted by permission from the Scientific Monthly, February, 1919. 
411 
