236 The Insects of the Past Tear and Progress in Inse t Shde 



from our agriculturists for aid in times of need — it affords me 

 more gratification than I can express, to be able to report a pro- 

 gress in economic entomology, such as I had not dared to hope 

 ever to see. Those of you who have had hard experiences in your 

 gardens and elsewhere in fighting some of our most commou in- 

 sect pests, such as the wire-worm, the white-grub, the rose-bug, 

 the cucumber-beetle and the cabbage-worm, should also rejoice 

 with me that these, together with many others of the kind, 

 will, in all probability, ere long, be brought under such control that 

 serious injury from them can be prevented. Scores of enthusiastic 

 workers are now engaged in earnest study of the successive stages in 

 the lives of our more injurious insects, that their most vulnerable 

 points may be learned, and in experiments which shall indicate the 

 most simple, inexpensive and efficient method of dealing with each 

 insect pest. No preceding year has marked so great an advance in 

 applied entomology as has the last. 



This is the direct result of the beneficent provisions of what is 

 commonly known as the " Hatch Act " of the forty-ninth Congress, of 

 1887, for the establishment of an agricultural experiment station in 

 each of the United States, to embrace those departments of investiga- 

 tion and experiment which will bear most directly on the agricultural 

 industry of the respective States. Thirty of these stations have al- 

 ready organized a department of entomology, or of entomology and 

 botany united — the two studies being intimately connected in the 

 interrelation of insect injuries and plant diseases. The valuable work 

 accomplished by these entomologists has been shown in several publi- 

 cations, in bulletins of the stations, etc., which have been highly 

 creditable, and, undeniably, contributions of much economic import- 

 ance; and further, giving assurance of rich results to follow. 



I cannot refrain from referring, in illustration of the character and 

 value of the work that is being done in insect warfare, by the experi- 

 ment stations, to that recently conducted at the Minnesota Experiment 

 Station, by its very able entomologist, Dr. Otto Lugger. It was an 

 effort to save from destruction the crops of a section in Otter Tail 

 county from the descendants of a few Eocky Mountain locusts, 

 Caloptenus spretus, that had located there in 1884, and at the time that 

 active operations against them were commenced (in 1888) had hatched 

 in numbers sufficient, as estimated, not only to destroy the entire crops 

 of that county but of a large portion of the State. The preceding 

 year five thousand acres of wheat had been swept away. In this 



