5 
mitigate their attacks upon crops. ‘This training, however, is essen- 
tially necessary in the same way that learning the alphabet is necessary 
for one who wishes to read or speak accurately ; but it is beyond this 
point that theadvantages of our association may be recognized. Thereis 
not, perhaps, any single line of practical science, certainly not one ap- 
proaching it in the importance of the results attained, in which students 
have to work so much alone and cut off from companions of congenial 
tastes. Marvel at it as we may, we, who know the exquisite beauty 
and sustaining charms of the insect world, cannot but acknowledge that 
entomology is not a popular study, and although in this respect there 
is a gradual change taking place for the better, still all the same it is 
with feelings akin to amusement and patronage that the ordinary 
farmer of the country allows himself to listen to arguments that there 
is after all some use in studying the habits of insects. 
Probably most of us present have occasionaily had the opportunity 
of addressing farmers’ institute meetings, and know well that al- 
though, after the meeting is over, there are invariably more inquiries 
about common insect crop pests than any other subject which may have 
been discussed, and when the meeting breaks up it is always the ento- 
mologist who is detained to answer the questions of those who did not 
like to stand up and speak before the others; yet for all this, prob- 
ably most of you will recognize the extreme similarity which exists 
between the expectant smile which meets you from every part of the 
audience when you are introduced to speak on insects in a new locality 
and that which greets the announcement of the high-class comic songs 
which are usually dispensed on those occasions. You also know the 
necessity, and have probably been often asked by the chairman at 
these meetings in so many words, to begin with some joke “to catch 
the attention of the audience.” An appeal must then be made to their 
pockets, and you must remind them of the crops destroyed and dollars _ 
lost by depredations of pests which levy tribute every year, as the 
turnip flea-beetle, cutworms, potato-beetles, ete. 
You explain the simplicity of many remedies and the great saving 
that will follow their application. They had not thought of these 
things; gradually the smiles die out and the other extreme of serious- 
ness is reached. They awaken now; with bodies leaning forward and 
heads raised they drink in every word; their eyes brighten and their 
mouths gradually open with wonder at the losses they have suffered 
and might have prevented had they but known of these simple things 
before. It touches them to the quick to be told that 10 cents’ worth of 
Paris green would have saved their crop of gooseberries or currants ; 
have done away with the necessity of sowing their turnips two or three 
times at a hundred times the cost; that 10 cents expended in spraying 
an apple or plum tree would have given them a return of three or four 
dollars’ worth of good fruit; that by simply wrapping a piece of news- 
paper around their young cabbages or tomatoes at the time of setting 
