; 
~How shall we proceed to the discovery of new facts? Is it sufficient 
to go about our duties with eyes wide open and minds alert, making 
discoveries at random here and there which have no close relation one 
to another? To make and chronicle any new discovery is well, but 
the difference between one who is simply a good observer and the 
scientific worker in applied entomology will be manifest in the fact 
that the latter will so plan and systematize his work that the facts 
observed and the conclusions veached will have an intimate relation 
one to the other and willform a basis for economic operations. While 
I believe the work in applied entomology is on a higher level in this 
respect than ever before, still there is room for improvement. 
And then each should specially strive for those facts the possession 
of which will enable us to generalize and lay down working princi- 
ples, or, as put by Professor Osborn in his address, ‘‘ we should not 
neglect such underlying problems as shall perfect the fundamental 
knowledge of our science.” One discovers that the male of a codling 
moth possesses a black stripe or dash on the underside of the fore 
wing which makes it possible to separate it from the other sex. It is 
a fact well worth recording and of importance to those who are work- 
ing with the insect, but it has no underlying principle that enables 
one to draw important conclusions. ‘To discover that the moth begins 
laying her eggs on the fruit about a week after the bloom has fallen; 
that the egg is about ten days in hatching; that the young larva 
usually enters the calyx of the fruit and there begins to eat into it; 
that the calyx of the apple closes within a few days after the petals 
fall, is to discover facts closely related to each other and which enable 
us to intelligently plan for the destruction of the insect. 
In more than one presidential address we have been urged to put 
special stress upon life-history work. It is here particularly that we 
need new discoveries. Facts in life histories of insects must furnish 
a large proportion of the necessary basis for successful economic work. 
They are to the science of applied entomology what the laws of grav- 
itation, of chemical affinity, and of the indestructibility of matter are 
to one who is to be an analytic chemist. 
An examination of recent bulletins from experiment stations by 
the side of those that were published when this Association was organ- 
ized will show that more and better life-history work is being done. 
Let us continue to improve in this important line of study and let us 
hear freely from all suggestions of new or better methods. 
We should endeavor to choose those problems that are of pecul- 
iar interest, each in his particular State, or any important problem 
which others for some reason have shunned. Good examples of what 
I would urge are: The work being done by Professor Hopkins on the 
life histories of wood-boring beetles; the work of Dr. Forbes and 
others on insect diseases; the work of Professor Osborn upon the 
