REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR 1920-21 II 



fight them, how to combat insidious plant diseases; they are to be 

 encouraged to recognize the vast aid rendered to agriculture by 

 the activities of the birds, and the intelligent cultivator of the soil 

 will care to know the relation of all the lesser animals to the operations 

 of the farm. In prosecuting investigations of the insects and their 

 habits, determining those that are vicious toward human interests, 

 and the procedures effective in checking their ravages; in claiming 

 protection for those that are friends to man; in seeking methods to 

 control disease-creating plants; in many other lines of investigation 

 of living nature, the scientific staff of the Museum render a daily 

 service. Menaces to these great community interests must be fore- 

 seen and anticipated. Associated departments of state government 

 with larger police power must be warned and advised in impending 

 danger. Issues at court must be determined with exact knowledge; 

 individual enterprises which may make for profit or for 'loss are to 

 be so advised that they may not take the wrong path. 



The people are also entitled to knowledge of the rock foundation 

 of the State, its geological structure, the source of its underground 

 wealth as well as of its soils, so exact as to require the most careful 

 delineation and classification of the rock strata on maps, charts, 

 and sections. As such work can be executed only by an accurate 

 analysis of the contents and composition of these rock strata, 

 mineral and organic, that is by the chemical and mineral structure 

 of the rocks and the nature of the fossils they contain, all such 

 necessary investigations have a direct bearing on the understanding 

 of our natural resources and on the welfare of the people. 



There is a further and higher relation to the welfare of the State 

 in these studies of the fossil contents of the rocks; less tangible 

 perhaps in direct application, but of first order of merit in their 

 relation to intellectual progress. Two-thirds of the area of New York 

 is underlain by rocks which carry the records of the life of the earth 

 which preceded by vast ages the life of the present. They hold 

 the ancestral stock of existing life and only by a comprehension 

 of these early forms of life in their simpler expression can we fully 

 grasp the modes and procedures of development which have led 

 to the more complicated and higher life of today. 



5 It is obvious that such activities as are above indicated can not 

 be given their full value or the results be made of service to the 

 State unless they are published. These results are the property 

 of the State which has stood sponsor for them. It is not fair to 

 the people that they should be given to the public through technical 

 or scientific journals of limited circulation, even were this often 

 practicable. Gravely inadequate provision is now made for such 



