6 
been characteristic of modern times, and to this must be attributed 
much of the advancement which, as a nation, we have made in agri- 
culture, in commerce, and in manufacture. 
Agriculture, especially, has benefited by this activity. Agricul- 
tural chemistry, plant pathology, horticulture, bacteriology, ento- 
mology, and other branches of pure and applied science have each 
made notable contributions. It would be to no purpose to discuss the 
relative importance of the contributions which these respective 
sciences have made and are making to agriculture, for they are as 
the links in a chain and are closely related in theory and in practice; 
but a prominent place must be conceded to economic entomology, 
which has, perhaps, been as productive of immediate practical results 
as any other. Although, in the United States, among the youngest 
of the sciences concerned with problems relating to agriculture. the 
results achieved have placed economic entomology in the front rank. 
In explanation of its phenomenal growth it may be said that one 
of our necessities, as a rapidly developing country, has been the reduc- 
tion of insect losses to permit the profitable cultivation of many of 
our important crops. With the constantly increasing population, 
new regions have been settled and the lands planted in crops, the 
more or less isolated farms of former days giving way to practically 
unbroken areas of corn, wheat, cotton, and other crops, often of many 
miles in extent, thus furnishing ideal conditions for the development 
and spread of noxious species. Being preeminently a practical peo- 
ple, we have devised ways and means as the demand has grown, and 
at the present time the status of economic entomology is quite in 
keeping with our agricultural conditions. 
The rate and magnitude of our agricultural growth and the conse- 
quent stimulus to apphed entomology may, perhaps, be fairly judged 
from certain statistics concerning the production of some of our 
staple crops during the decade covered by the Twelfth Census. The 
increase in plantings of corn from 1889 to 1899 in the United States 
was 22,829,159 acres, an increase of 31.7 per cent. In the decade 
from 1890 to 1900 the area of wheat in the country shows a gain of 
56.6 per cent, or-about 19,000,000 acres. The increase in the area of 
cotton from 1889 to 1899 was 4,099,831 acres, a gain of 20.3 per cent, 
and it bears on the subject to note that of this total increase Texas, 
Oklahoma, and Indian Territory: furnished 3,637,398 acres, or 88.7 
per cent. The State and Territories mentioned, it will be remem- 
bered, are at the present time suffering more severely from insect 
depredations on cotton than is any other part of the cotton belt. 
The increase in plantings of deciduous fruits has been scarcely less 
remarkable. At the present time there are numerous orchards, of 
