260 Forty-fifth Report on the State Museum. 



The fact can not be denied that a rapid advance is being made 

 at the present time in the science of agriculture (we are no longer 

 afraid to call science to its aid) through the investigations and 

 teachings of our Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations. 

 Well it is that the results of these investigations are being brought 

 before our farmers very efficiently, through the Farmers' Institutes, 

 which are being so successfully conducted in several of our States. 

 It having been my privilege to attend a number of these institutes, it 

 seems to me that their teaching may be summed up under these three 

 heads: How to feed and care for farm stock; how to feed the soil 

 (this embraces its cultivation), and how to protect and preserve 

 for use the products of farm labor. Under these will naturally 

 group themselves all of the prominent topics of discussion, as food 

 and shelter and care of stock, production and preservation of 

 manures, artificial fertilizers, rotation of crops, the products of the 

 dairy, stock breeding, fruit growing, ensilage, and the like. 



I need hardly state this truism, that all the labor, care, and 

 money that you expend in the effort to produce the conditions cal- 

 culated to give you the best possible returns, will be lost, just so 

 far as you fail, through neglect or lack of knowledge, to secure 

 the resultant products to which you are entitled. In many direc- 

 tions are you chargeable with this neglect, but suffice it for the 

 present if I refer only to that particular one, of which, in the invi- 

 tation given me to address you at this time, you virtually confess 

 yourselves at fault, and make promise of doing better in the future, 

 if I will point the way. 



Your secretary has suggested as my topic, " Entomology in the 

 Eastern United States; the importance of a more comprehensive 

 knowledge of entomology to the farmer and fruit-grower, with 

 some suggestions as to th esimplest and quickest way of getting 

 this knowledge before those interested." This, I think, is 

 embraced under the brief title that I have selected for my paper. 



Economic Entomology. 

 The losses resulting from insect depredations in the United 

 States are wry far in excess of those sustained in any other por- 

 tion of the globe. The aggregate of annual losses to agricultural 

 products is startling when an at tempt is made to estimate it, while 



