720 HINTS FOR THE PROMOTION OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY. 
If the latter be a part of the cause of the agitation to which we 
allude, let us see if the same idea cannot be utilized for our pres- 
ent purpose. There is money, aye, much money, in any well de- 
vised scheme for the practical application of entomology to the 
protection of agricultural interests. First, there is the saving of 
untold millions in the productions of the country, now destroyed 
by insect pests. Second, there is the necessity for the expansion 
and reorganization of the Department of Agriculture, so that it 
will represent and protect the farmers, to the same extent that the 
Coast Survey protects the commercial interests of the nation. 
In this expansion and reorganization of the Department of Agri- 
culture the controlling power should be the highest scientific ability 
that can be procured for the place, and the office should cease to be 
as it has been since its establishment, a semi-sinecure for persons 
of small or local political influence. New places would have to be 
created, but with a moderate sprinkling of good working scientific 
men, many of these might be regarded like other offices, as the 
spoils of the dominant political party, and the interests of the 
farmer still be protected. Better would it be, though, if the latter 
class should demand that the government give them a thoroughly 
organized, compact, industrious body of the best trained scientific 
men, to teach them what should be done to control the destroyers 
of their labor. 
There is now lying idle in Washington a great mass of notes on 
habits of injurious insects, collected by the untiring exertion of 
Mr. T. Glover, the industrious entomologist of the Department of 
Agriculture. This material, in its present imperfect form, if ar- 
ranged under proper scientific supervision, and illustrated by 
figures submitted to judicious criticism, and then published in the 
same careful manner as the explorations of the Engineers, the 
Coast Survey, and other scientific departments of the government, 
would be of great utility in preparing the condensed reports, which 
should finally be accessible to every intelligent agriculturist. 
One more illustration, and we will dismiss this already some- 
what prolix simile of the invading army. 
As in all such cases of aggression, it is competent with the 
higher military authorities to take private property for the benefit 
of the nation; so, too, a power similar in its results, though less 
despotic in its exercise, is necessary in our contests with the 
organic “powers of the air,” which attack our fields. How this — 
