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JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 



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eveiy climate and under all sorts of world conditions. Important 

 parasites found in a remote region will not have to be carried immense 

 distances in the future, but ^dll be relayed from one country- to another, 

 a generation or so reared at each stop and then sent on. 



The passage of the Federal Horticultural Law in 1912 has brought 

 us into the closest relationship ^dth the plant inspection services of 

 other countries, and last year at a congress in Rome an effort was made 

 to harmonize laws and to bring about comparatively uniform systems 

 by the different countries. This is a movement which will gain force 

 in the future. One of the more trivial and unconsidered aspects of 

 the present war is its effect on inspection services. Of course shipments 

 of plants and plant products from the countries engaged are almost 

 entirely at a standstill, but arrangements have been made b}^ our au- 

 thorities to accept Holland's certificates for Belgian shipments, and 

 the other day I received a note from the French Ambassador stating 

 that his government had cabled him on behalf of Dr. Paul ]\Iarchal to 

 the effect that the French inspection service will be carried on to the 

 best of his ability under the circumstances. 



How the entomological problems of the future will be met can only 

 be guessed at, but the work of the past few years has greatly increased 

 our belief in the necessity for the most thorough biological studj^ of 

 every injurious form. So many instances have occurred with species 

 whose life historj^ was apparenth^ well understood and whose behavior 

 was also thought to be known but which have been found under inten- 

 sive stud}' to possess unexpected points of attack, that the importance 

 of the closest study of everj^ species from everj point of view has be- 

 come very evident. The trend is towards intensive study of every 

 phase of the insect's existence. 



Since we have built up in this country in these past twenty or thirty 

 years such a Yery respectable branch of knowledge which we have 

 termed '^economic entomology" or ''applied entomolog}^," we are 

 naturally proud of our accomplishment and anxious to see the good 

 work continue in the same general way and wider the same name. 

 But there is a tendency now to break into the solidarity of our branch 

 of science and to unite us vAxh the plant-disease people under the term 

 ''phj^topathology " in so far as insects affect plant life, and with the in- 

 ternal parasite people, under the term "parasitologj-," where insects 

 directly affect man or animals. I think that economic entomologists 

 should resist this tendency. The term ''phytopathology," in this sig- 

 nificance, apparently originated in Germany. Perhaps for the reason 

 that at the time there were practicall}^ no economic entomologists in 

 Germany, there was no protest, but when the European San Jose scale 

 scare occurred in 1898 and an inspection service was started in that 



