22 
IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
Enough, perhaps, to say that production is to be still further accelerated, farm 
conditions both for greater production and better living immeasurably im- 
proved and the basis of support for a denser population enlarged. Here, as 
in medicine, botany, zoology, and bacteriology are playing a most important 
part. 
Linked to these phases of human activity in most important manner is the 
problem of transportation, an activity perhaps more typical of the modern 
spirit than any other. Locomotion by water, by land, and now by air, has 
been accelerated in a marvelous degree in the quarter century just passed. 
Twenty years ago I stood in a street in this city of Des Moines and watched 
a street parade, the most interesting feature of which, to me at least, was a 
horseless carriage driven by electricity, one of the very few up to that time 
that had actually been made to work. For a number of years after that the 
automobile was in a strictly experimental stage. Now! Well, it is entirely 
unnecessary to mention motor boats or motor vehicles or even flying machin-es 
as of doubtful accomplishment. I doubt, however, if we fully realize the im- 
mense changes produced in our social status by the progress in rapid transit 
on water or on land for the last few years. As for the place of aerial navi- 
gation, that is yet to appear, but I have no doubt as to its practical application 
in human affairs. It cannot displace present niodes of travel or transportation, 
but will, I have no doubt, create a class of service for itself and doubtless 
one w^hich will have a profound influence on human welfare. 
Closely linked again is the question of rapid communication. Foreshadowed 
by the telegraph, electrical science has in recent years given us the telephone 
and the wireless, as accomplished facts in communication, regardless of time 
and space. Thirty years ago, when the first commercial lines of telephone 
were being connected up, it was still looked upon largely as a toy. Very few, 
even of its most ardent promoters probably, had any conception of how it 
would alter the conditions of human life, or revolutionize methds of commerce 
and the relation of social centers, or of city to country. So swiftly and quietly 
has this come that I doubt if we fully realize the significance of it all. While 
there still remains to those of us w^ho saw it come some remnant of wonder 
at the phenomenon, the coming generation accept it as a matter of course 
and chatter through the telephone apparently oblivious of the marvelous 
scientific achievement which put it at their service. 
And so we might go on with other achievements of the recent years, the 
cotton picker, the trolley car, the gas engine, long distance transmission of 
power, and the moving picture, all of which would have been impossible but 
for scientific discoveries and their application. I desire, however, to take a 
little time for the achievements in my own more special field of work — that 
of Entomological Science. Not alone because of my greater familiarity with 
it or because it has been the field of my own labor, but in part because I am 
constrained to think that the actual progress in this field has not been ap- 
preciated, even among biological students, as fully as the facts may warrant. 
While to say that Economic Entomology has been developed in the last 
quarter century would be putting it too strong, it is true that so large a part 
of the growth, both for the determination of the fundamental principles and 
for the application of these to special problems has occurred within this period 
that it is not unfair to claim it for this epoch. 
