Pebman-, '15] HOWARD: PROGRESS OF ECONOMIC ENTO^IOLOGY 



117 



country to prevent the incoming of this dreaded insect, a plant disease 

 man was put at the head of the service, a curious anomaly which prob- 

 ably might not have occurred elsewhere. It is true that an entomol- 

 ogist was appointed under this person, but the service suffered. The 

 term ''ph3^topathology " should be restricted to plant diseases, and 

 many Germans themselves believe this. A society of economic ento- 

 mologists, on the plan of our own association, was founded in 

 Germany last year, and, through its efforts and increasing importance, 

 it is likely that the encroaching botanists mil be held in check. It is 

 perhaps of sufficient interest to state that the congress which was 

 called at Rome last year to consider inspection services was called a 

 phytopathological congress although it was distinctly understood that 

 the function of the congress was to consider questions relating prin- 

 cipally to the prevention of international transportation of injurious 

 insects. The United States sent no delegate to this convention, but 

 did send a letter urging that future congresses of the same nature 

 should be termed congresses of economic entomology and phyto- 

 pathology. 



It is very obvious that plant pathology and economic entomology are 

 unrelated in their basic principles. Their successful study requires from 

 worJcers absolutely different training and wholly different technique. To 

 combine them into one service would be impracticable, except as units 

 of a large agricultural institution. To combine them under one name 

 as a branch of agricultural science is absurd ! 



The second term, '^parasitology," has perhaps a better justification 

 than the other, but the questions relating to the damage done by in- 

 sects to man and domestic animals is competently handled by the 

 economic entomologists familiar with the whole range of entomological 

 activity. Why take a protozoologist or a helminthologist and make 

 him learn all about the insects that affect animals in order to become a 

 parasitologist, when the men who have always worked at economic 

 entomology are handling the same questions under another term? In 

 our entomological proceedings and in our entomological journals and 

 our entomological reports all matters relating to insects are brought 

 together. Why put entomological material together with a lot of 

 plant disease material into a pubhcation entitled phytopathology, 

 and why mix up a lot of entomological material with a lot of other 

 material on worms and the like in a publication called parasitology? 

 And after a branch of applied science has been so well grounded and so 

 successfully carried on under a comprehensive and at the same time 

 exact term like '' economic entomology," why try to confuse matters 

 and break into a field so well defined and so successfully organized? 



Both terms have come to us from Europe, and the attempt to in- 



