February, ’24] 
DISCUSSION PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
59 
by insects, there is reason to believe that this damage has been under¬ 
estimated, rather than over-estimated. 
President A. G. Ruggles: We will now take up the discussion of 
the Presidential Address and I will call upon Vice-President Gossard to 
preside. 
Vice-President Gossard : Our Presidents have always had the wid¬ 
est discretion in choosing their subjects. They tell us things that we 
ought to know in regard to the policy of the Association, changes recom¬ 
mended in our mode of functioning, etc. They give us instruction, 
inspiration and whatever recommendations they see fit. An address is 
significant, not only for what is in it, but also for what is not in it. 
If we do not find within the address any recommendations for changes 
in our policy, or in our manner of doing things, we take it for granted that 
our machinery is functioning satisfactorily, and that we are in a rather 
happy condition. I am also quite sure that a matter-of-fact address, 
given in brief time, is very acceptable to the Society. I think we have 
had, this morning, one of the shortest addresses on record, and the 
absence of any poetry in it certainly does not indicate that the speaker 
lacks idealism, for we had held before us some splendid ideals. It also 
should not indicate any lack of the prophetic spirit, because we had a 
good look ahead. 
The address is now open to you for discussion. 
Mr. E. P. Felt: I wish to extend to our President a note of personal 
gratification in the dissertation with which he favored us. It struck me 
extremely timely that he should make the comparison as he did between 
the development of various early Entomologists at the time the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science was born. 
We fail to realize, sometimes, how recent scientific work is in this 
country, and I am very willing to agree with the President in thinking 
that we are just at the beginning, that although those earlier men were pio¬ 
neers, and are commonly regarded by us as pioneers, that in the near fut¬ 
ure, we in turn will be regarded as pioneers. You cannot help but feel that 
we are on the eve of tremendous projects—that we are reaching out to 
take advantage of the knowledge gained in other branches of science 
in order to make it our own so far as the advancement of Economic 
Entomology is concerned. I would also like to emphasize one point 
in this connection, and that is our Entomology is Economic only in 
proportion to which it is put into practice. Whatever ideas we may 
