April, ’23] 
hyslop: insect pest survey 
215 
the particles of which are colloidal. If diluted to a milk appearance it 
will last for weeks or months in that condition without separating. It is 
manufactured by the Sun Oil Company of Philadelphia. 
It is a by-product and obtained by their method of refining oil. 
They say that it will be standard and will not vary from time to time. 
President J. G. Sanders: Has it not a commercial use as a cutting 
oil? 
Mr. William Moore: Yes. I believe they have tried experiments 
with it. 
Adjournment, 5 p. m. 
INSECT PEST SURVEY WORK IN THE UNITED STATES 
By J. A. Hyslop, Bureau of Entomology 
Abstract 
After reviewing the history of Survey work in the United States from 1889 to the 
present date, and recounting earlier attempts at this type of work by the Bureau of 
Entomology, the scope and objects of Survey work were set forth in the following 
words: “As I now conceive the scope of our work, the object of the Insect Pest 
Survey is to collect accurate and detailed information on occurrences, distribution, 
ecology, and relative destructiveness of insect pests throughout the United States, 
to study , these data from month to month, and year to year, with relation to the 
several factors that influence insect abundance, and to prepare this information and 
the conclusions drawn therefrom in the form of maps and text for the use of all 
entomological workers throughout the country,” with the ultimate object of eventu¬ 
ally delineating insect zones in the United States and forecasting insect outbreaks. 
An analysis of the chinch bug outbreaks in the State of Kansas during the past 
fifty years brought out a very decided correlation between the mean annual rainfall 
and the optimum chinch bug belt in that state. The main thesis brought forward 
was that Survey work, i.e., the accurate recording of insect abundance from year to 
year, will indicate, after a reasonable number of years, the zone of optimum ecologic 
conditions affecting any given insect, and the yearly abundance of an insect will be 
determined by the departures from these optimum conditions. 
In 1893, at the fifth meeting of this Association, Dr. S. A. Forbes 
very aptly characterized the entomological organization as it then 
existed when he said: “American economic entomologists are working 
each by and for himself, altogether without general supervision and 
commonly without mutual consultation or co-operative plan, with the 
consequent fact that our investigations are as a whole heterogeneous, 
determined in each case largely by personal bias and local circumstances 
instead of by common objects and a general view.” That this is not 
conducive of best results or, to put it conversely, that co-operative and 
