78 
That much of the loss occasioned hy insects is preventable and ought to be pre- 
vented ; that it properly belongs to government to provide the necessary means for 
protecting cultivators from this loss, as it is only by simultaneous action over con- 
siderable districts that it can be effectually done, and government alone possesses or 
can obtain the requisite means of indorsing such action ; that the president and lords 
of the council and the agricultural societies of the United Kingdom be informed of 
the opinion of this conference and urged to take the subject at once into their con- 
sideration, with a view to providing a remedy. 
While we have no doubt that this conference was of sufficient impor- 
tance and attracted enough attention to induce the president, lords, 
etc., to take the subject into consideration, no further action resulted. 
IRELAND. 
Mr. George H. Carpenter was appointed in 1890 consulting entomol- 
ogist to the Royal Dublin Society, and has submitted four reports, enti- 
tled Report on Economic Entomology for the Year 1890, and the same 
for 1891, 1892, and 1893. Reprints of these reports from the Reports 
of the Council of the Royal Dublin Society have been distributed. Mr. 
Carpenter is assistant naturalist in the Science and Art Museum in 
Dublin, and I am not informed as to whether he receives special com- 
pensation for his work as consulting entomologist. 
GERMANY. 
Except in the one department of forest insects, the official side of 
economic entomology has not, in Germany, reached a high plane of devel- 
opment. In regard to the study of forest insects, however, Germany 
leads the world. The work of Ratzeburg is famous, and the impulse 
which he gave to the study, not alone through his published writings, 
but through his ability as a teacher, is felt today. His labors, and 
those of Nitsche, Althum, and others, have resulted in a widespread 
knowledge of all the important forest insects, which extends even to 
the lowest employes in the forestry service. With regard to the other 
departments of economic entomology, important works have been writ- 
ten by Bouche and -Nordlinger, Rossmasler, Taschenberg, and others, 
while the number of smaller articles upon injurious insects is very large. 
In Germany the need of entomological information, by means of numer- 
ous well-illustrated and cheap popular works, is perhaps better supplied 
than in any other country. No special institutions for the investiga- 
tion of the life histories of injurious animals existed, however, before 
1888, when, through the influence of Prof. Kiihn, in Halle, an exper- 
iment station for the extermination of sugar-beet Nematodes was 
founded, which Dr. Holrung, the present director, has expanded to some 
extent, so that other allied troubles, including injurious insects, are 
included in the scope of the work of the station. Dr. Holrung visited 
America during the summer of 1893, and expressed to the writer great 
interest in the work in economic entomology in this country, and ex- 
amined particularly the methods in use in the insectary of the Depart- 
