July 12, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



39 



accept it as a matter of course and chatter 

 through the telephone apparently oblivious 

 of the marvelous scientific achievement 

 which put it at their service. 



And so we might go on with other 

 achievements of the recent years, the cot- 

 ton picker, the trolley car, the gas engine, 

 long-distance transmission of power and 

 the moving picture, all of which would 

 have been impossible but for scientific dis- 

 coveries and their application. I desire, 

 however, to take a little time for the 

 achievements in my own more special field 

 of work — that of entomological science. 

 Not alone because of my greater familiar- 

 ity with it or because it has been the field 

 of my own labor, but in part because I am 

 constrained to think that the actual prog- 

 ress in this field has not been appreciated, 

 even among biological students, as fully as 

 the facts may warrant. 



While to say that economic entomology 

 has been developed in the last quarter cen- 

 tury would be putting it too strong, it is 

 true that so large a part of the growth, 

 both for the determination of the funda- 

 mental principles and for the application 

 of these to special problems has occurred 

 within this period that it is not unfair to 

 claim it for this epoch. 



Less than fifty years ago I was rapping 

 potato vines over a tin pan to catch the 

 potato beetles that were devastating the 

 potato fields in Iowa. In fact, as far as I 

 recall, this was my first entry into the 

 field of economic entomology and I believe 

 about my first financial income was derived 

 from this sort of service. But it was a 

 good many years afterward that methods 

 of control for that pest based on knowledge 

 of habits, life history and chemical poisons 

 were an accomplished fact in economic 

 entomology. 



The warfare with the Colorado grass- 

 hopper, the cotton worm, the San Jose 



scale, the gipsy moth, browntail moth, 

 cotton boll weevil and such old-time pests 

 as the codling moth, chinch bug and Hes- 

 sian fly have either been fought and more 

 or less completely won within the last 

 quarter century or so nearly within it as 

 to form a part of its history. 



One of the very striking lines of progress 

 has been in the transportation of the para- 

 sitic enemies of injurious insects, a phase 

 of economic work which had only just be- 

 gun twenty-five years ago, and which has 

 been practically developed within the last 

 decade with special reference to the depre- 

 dations of the gipsy moth and the brown- 

 tail moth. While this mode of contest with 

 injurious insects, especially those which 

 are introduced is not as yet entirely past 

 the experimental stage, so much encourage- 

 ment has been derived from recent results 

 that we must certainly look upon it as a 

 very important phase of entomological in- 

 vestigation, and one from which we will 

 almost certainly secure important results 

 for certain pests. It may not be possible 

 to duplicate in any case the phenomenal 

 success attained in the control of the cot- 

 tony-cushion scale in California, but the 

 success with that species and the less per- 

 fect success in the case of others must at 

 least point the way to further efforts, and 

 we may expect that a certain number of 

 important species may finally be controlled 

 in this manner. 



The methods for control for introduced 

 species the spread of which may be re- 

 tarded by quarantine or inspection have 

 been developed entirely within the quarter 

 century and the service rendered iu 

 this manner is beyond computation. 



To a large extent, the content and method 

 of economic entomology have been ap- 

 propriated in other special fields. Espe- 

 cially is this true in horticulture, where the 

 methods and results of entomological re- 



