APRIL 12, 1912] 
It requires, as Mr. Taylor has stated, two 
years of actual outside work before they 
can be at all profitably employed. 
Now, I do not believe that such condi- 
tions as these are necessary to a college or 
university education, but that the cause 
therefor will be found in the methods em- 
ployed. If we go back to medieval times 
and for a considerable period thereafter, 
we find but scant literature, and that little 
accessible only to the few. Therefore in- 
struction was of necessity oral and knowl- 
edge obtained only at great cost was re- 
tained only by committing to memory with 
the utmost exactness. Thus was an educa- 
tional system born of necessity and fitted 
to the conditions existing at that time. A 
pupil must not only receive instruction 
exactly as imparted, but must be able to 
show by examination that he could repeat 
what he had heard with the same minute 
exactness, otherwise what he had obtained 
would be erroneous and, therefore, of no 
value. 
Let us now come back from medieval 
times to the twentieth century. To an age 
when ships disabled at sea may make their 
situation and location known a thousand 
miles away and receive aid from other ves- 
sels within reach, though not within sight; 
to an age when you can, within a few 
hours, communicate with your friend, 
whether he happens to be in Tasmania, 
Alaska, Capetown or Hong Kong; to an 
age when, if a married man, you ean, 
seated in your hotel here in Washington, 
bid your wife good-night, whether she be in 
Boston, Chicago, St. Louis or New Orleans; 
when you can board a floating palace in 
New York and within five days step out of 
it in England; and when you enter a rail- 
way coach in Chicago and in three or four 
days step out of it in either Portland, Ore- 
gon, San Francisco or Los Angeles; or, you 
ean leave Chicago in the same way and in 
SCIENCE 
559 
eighteen hours walk the streets of New 
York City. 
From a time when a serious question 
arose in the minds of men as to whether or 
not insects were the results of spontaneous 
generation, to a time when insects from all 
quarters of the earth are being transported 
about from one country to another and 
reared up in myriads to destroy other in- 
sects. Within the memory of some of us, 
the entomologists of America could be told 
off on the fingers of one hand, and these 
were engaged in describing genera and spe- 
cles in a way that to-day is in many in- 
stances -practically unintelligible. Some 
years ago, I tried to get, from a man who 
had grown up from boyhood with Dr. Asa 
Fitch, some information regarding this one 
of the fathers of economic entomology. 
What I did succeed in learning was this: 
“Witch was a queer fellow, always prying 
into things that the Almighty never in- 
tended us to know.”’ 
Thirty years ago a state entomologist in 
the middle west resigned his office, telling 
his friends in confidence that economic en- 
tomology had reached its limit, and, so far 
as he could discern, there would soon be 
nothing for the entomologist to do. At the 
close of A.D. 1911 the question is to get men 
properly trained to carry on the work that 
state and nation demands to be done. 
There is hardly a civilized people on the 
face of the earth among whom there are 
not to be found officials who are entomolo- 
cists. Not a year passes by during which 
some of these may not be seen here in 
Washington, studying our methods of 
work, our collections, especially the former. 
One of America’s foremost philanthropists 
is sufficiently aware of the importance of 
this to supply the necessary funds to enable 
these men from other countries to come and 
see for themselves how the science of ento- 
mology is being profitably applied in this 
