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THE OUTLOOK FOR ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY. 



covery of this character made privately, and pat- 

 ented to the gain of the individual, than not to have 

 it made at all ; but the added expense to the public 

 at large furnishes the strongest argument for in- 

 creased activity on the part of state and national 

 workers in this direction. Every promising field 

 should be explored by such officials, and every dis- 

 covery should be made of free and instant avail to 

 the people. 



There is room for gain, without patent protec- 

 tion, to many manufacturers in the utilization of 

 certain by-products, either as actual insecticides or 

 as the carriers of poisons. Such products can often 

 be placed on the market, by parties having excep- 

 tional facilities, at a reasonable or even large profit, 

 and deserve, where worthy, every encouragement ; 

 but the ease with which patents are obtained, par- 

 ticularly in this class, offers a great temptation to 

 the unprincipled and avaricious, and more than one 

 mixture is on the market to-day which does not de- 

 serve protection. 



3. Much that I have just said applies with equal 

 strength to the past and future of our third cate- 

 gory, the invention and improvement of insecticide 

 appliances. 



Advances in this field have been rapid since the 

 discovery of insecticides which can be economically 

 applied to extensive field crops or orchards, and 

 chiefly date from 1878, when the thorough investi- 

 gation of the cotton-worm began. This insect 

 multiplies so rapidly, and its food-plant is grown in 

 fields of such great extent, that spraying machinery 

 of considerable power was necessary for the appli- 

 cation of those insecticides which were found to be 

 of avail. Many mechanical devices, however, had 

 been invented a few years previously for destroying 

 locusts on a large scale during the investigation of 

 the Rocky Mountain locust {Caloptenns spretus). 

 While the work of the U. S. Entomological Com- 

 mission and of the U. S. Department of Agricul- 

 ture have thus been potent in the development both 

 of insecticides and of insecticide appliances, many 

 important advances have come from private enter- 

 prise. Necessity here, as elsewhere, is the mother 

 of invention, and while all countries have acknowl- 

 edged American leadership in this field, many of 

 the most ingenious insecticide machines have been 

 produced abroad. Admirable pumps for the sub- 

 terranean injection of insecticides against the grape 

 phylloxera and other root-inhabiting forms have 

 been devised in France as the result of special 

 need, and the whole class of knapsack-pumps for 

 vineyard use has reached a high development in 



France and Italy. Although mainly diVected for 

 late years against fungi, they are admirably adapted 

 to the spraying of insecticides in the vineyard and 

 upon other low-growing crops. America alone, 

 however, has seen any considerable degree of de- 

 velopment of horse-power sprayers for field crops, 

 although the recently invented " Strawsonizer " of 

 England is an excellent machine for this purpose, 

 barring its considerable cost. 



In this field of work the official entomologist can- 

 not afford to antagonize private enterprise ; indeed, 

 he may well assist it. Competition among manu- 

 facturers will soon reduce prices to an economical 

 basis, although at the present time they are in some 

 instances absurdly high. There will always be 

 some difficulty in having a machine, invented by an 

 official and unprotected by letters patent, manufac- 

 tured for the trade. The old saying "What is 

 everyone's business is no one's business " applies 

 here. There are some 24 firms now manufacturing 

 insecticide apparatus in the United States to-day, 

 and the number is constantly on the increase. 

 Many of the manufactures are essentially the 

 same as, or but slight modifications of, those first 

 described and recommended by official entomolo- 

 gists who have been unable or unwilling to put their 

 discoveries to commercial account. The economic 

 entomologist points out the want and the means of 

 meeting it ; the cultivator creates the demand and 

 the manufacturer supplies it. 



To conclude : As one of the immediate results 

 of the great increase in the number of paid ento- 

 mologists who are able to devote all or nearly all of 

 their time to the work, consequent on the recent 

 establishment of the State Experiment Stations, we 

 may expect, after a little preliminary repetition of 

 previously known facts and remedies in the interest 

 of accessibility, great advance along the lines of 

 our first category. Our knowledge of the life-his- 

 tories and habits of all plant-destroying pests 

 should take great and immediate strides, and, 

 as I have shown, new preventives and remedies 

 will undoubtedly result from the establishing of new 

 facts of this character. Progress in the second 

 and third categories will be much slower. Yet we 

 may confidently anticipate advance in the cheap- 

 ening of insecticides, and in better knowledge of 

 their properties and the conditions governing their 

 application. We may as confidently look for cheap- 

 er and better apparatus, though radical and im- 

 portant discoveries in this direction are hardly to 

 be anticipated, however much hoped for. 



C. V. Riley. 



