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come to have a decided infiuence in one or the other of these directions. 
Where an agricultural college is separate from the experiment station, 
the case is different, and the fitness of the teacher of entomology 
should, largely at least, decide which branch of the science he should 
follow. Generally, however, such teachers are already bending under 
the burden of too many other sciences to be able to follow their ineli- 
nations to any great extent, and, as a result, the work that they do 
accomplish is done at the expense of their vacations, or of the hours 
largely devoted to rest by the mass of mankind. 
I do not believe it is possible for an official entomologist to do as 
good work as an independent investigator, if the latter is honest, truth- 
ful, and has had a reasonable amount of scientific training. Say what 
we will, the position of an official economic entomologist becomes more 
or less of a treadmill, and necessarily so, because of the vast amount 
of correspondence, a very large portion of which is simply a repetition 
of old and well known facts that have been repeated again and again, 
year after year, often several times to the same persons. This will 
probably always continue, as the economic entomologist must of neces- 
sity be a teacher, not necessarily of children, youths, or maidens, but 
of men, and many of these more or less illiterate. But the chief diffi- 
culty comes from the impossibility, almost, of taking up a problem and 
following it wherever it may lead—the only true method of carrying 
out investigations in natural science. Every naturalist knows full 
well that he must become the willing slave of his subject—must “study 
nature where nature is,” or content himself with more or less defective, 
if not inaccurate, results. How many of us can recall instances where 
we have been obliged, on account of Some comparatively insignificant 
matter, to discontinue entirely or temporarily studies and observations 
of the greatest interest and value. Generally speaking, I believe that 
the results of the work of an investigator will depend more than any- 
thing else on his absolute freedom while thus engaged, and I fully 
believe that this will account for many of the shortcomings of our eco- 
nomie entomologists of to-day. The mass of mankind can not seem to 
comprehend that the naturalist, in order to secure results of value, 
must work out his problems in a natural way and not as a part of a 
machine, and that this condition is universal and one which no power 
on earth can change. It is possiblé for men especially fitted for the 
task to organize corps of investigators; but above and beyond this, 
and in fact overshadowing every other element, stands the fact that 
the individual must be free from every care except his subject of 
investigation, and to this he must bend his whole energy of body and 
mind or not expect success. 
I have referred to the station bulletin as a conveyance for placing 
the results of studies and investigations before the public, but there 
is still another, and what appears to me to be a still better one, viz, 
the daily and weekly press. Station publications, like all public docu- 
