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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 942 



have lived to see the time when a very- 

 large number of our botanists have brought 

 back to America the best that Europe had 

 to offer. There was a time when our botany- 

 might have been said to bear the mark 

 "made in England." In more recent 

 years it may be said to have been "made 

 in Germany." There are some patriotic 

 souls who hope that the time will come, if 

 it has not already come, when we may say 

 "made in America." I do not share their 

 feeling. To me it seems that botany is des- 

 tined to become more and more widely dif- 

 fused until it becomes world-wide and it 

 will be enough if we contribute our proper 

 share to the general stock. I have lived to 

 see the growth of several branches of bot- 

 any which practically were not studied at 

 all when I was young. Bacteriology and 

 cytology are of recent origin. Plant physi- 

 ology has been with us a child of slow 

 growth, but it frequently has been the case 

 that the strongest men have been slow in 

 their development. Plant pathology from 

 a crude and semi-popular beginning has 

 become an exact science in whose study 

 and practical application we have already 

 surpassed other nations. When this so- 

 ciety meets forty years hence, I shall not 

 be present. Few of you will be present. 

 But whatever of progress the speaker on 

 that occasion may be able to report will be 

 the result of a gradual development. It 

 can hardly be expected that he -will have 

 to record any such radical and complete 

 transformation as it has been my privilege 

 to present to you this evening. 



W. G. Farlow 

 Harvard Universitt 



THE SIMULIUM-PELLAGB.A PBOBLEM IN 

 ILLINOIS, U. S. A.^ 



The advancement of entomology owes much, 

 of recent years, to the stimulus supplied by 



^ Head at the Second International Congress of 

 Entomologists, Oxford, England, August 8, 1912. 



the discoveries made by medical men with 

 respect to the agency of insects in the trans- 

 mission of contagious diseases; and just now 

 our knowledge of the species, distribution, 

 habits, life histories and ecology of Simulium 

 is progressing by leaps and bounds in conse- 

 quence of the well-known Simulium theory of 

 the transmission of pellagra, announced by 

 Dr. Louis W. Sambon in 1905, and fully elab- 

 orated by him in the Journal of Tropical 

 Medicine and Hygiene in 1910. 



This stimulus to a study of these insects 

 reached me, in one of the interior states of 

 North America, in August, 1910, when, in 

 consequence of the appointment by the gov- 

 ernor of Illinois of a state commission for the 

 investigation of pellagra as occurring in the 

 insane asylums and other institutions of that 

 state, I was requested, as the official entomolo- 

 gist of Illinois, to contribute to their report 

 an account of the distribution of Simulium, 

 especially in the neighborhood of state insti- 

 tutions in which cases of pellagra were occur- 

 ring. As an investigation of all insects in- 

 jurious or dangerous to the public health in 

 Illinois is one of the prescribed duties of my 

 oiBce, I was bound to avail myself, to the best 

 of my ability, of this opportune call. This I 

 did by detailing an assistant, Mr. C A. Hart, 

 August 8, 1910, to commence observations and 

 collections along the central part of the 

 course of the Illinois River, and especially to 

 make a careful survey of the vicinity of the 

 general Hospital for the Insane, built upon a 

 bluffy bank of that stream near the city of 

 Peoria. My reason for giving particular at- 

 tention to this asylum was the fact that it 

 had been the principal seat of pellagra in 

 Illinois, containing in 1909 eighty per cent, of 

 the cases of this disease — that is, one hundred 

 and twenty-seven out of two hundred and 

 twenty — recognized that year in the whole 

 state. This bad preeminence has, in fact, 

 been since maintained, this asylum containing 

 sixty-three per cent, of the four hundred and 

 eight cases known to occur in Illinois during 

 the twenty-six months preceding the first of 

 September, 1911. 



