April, ’24] 
ENTOMOLOGICAL STATISTICS, DISCUSSION 
211 
I wouldn’t trust the estimates today at all. I think, if any of you re¬ 
member our old Hessian Fly Bulletin, No. 177, you will probably re¬ 
call the picture of two jars in which we showed a number of grains of 
wheat threshed out from a certain number of straws, and in another jar 
was the yield from an equal number of straws which were not infested 
with Hessian flies. We assumed that the difference between those two 
measures indicated the loss. 
I don’t think so at all today, because I have learned that the Hessian 
fly in the spring of the year seeks plants of a certain stage of development 
and size, and that they seek those plants which are backward and weak, 
and I am satisfied that the difference as shown between those pictured 
yields is altogether too great. In other words, the figures “lie.” So 
such things are not always altogether reliable. 
Another point was brought out which I also wish to emphasize. 
We should be very careful to distinguish between actual loss and mone¬ 
tary loss. The damage is usually stated in terms of the consumer’s 
dollar. As a matter of fact, the producer would take an entirely different 
view of the subject, and his monetary loss is entirely different. In 
many cases Hessian fly damage is of tremendous importance and a great 
loss to our population as a whole and to the consuming public, yet it 
may have been an actual advantage to the farmer and producer be¬ 
cause the insect limited their surplus and prevented a depression of 
prices. 
When I read that in Ohio, in the year 1900, there was a monetary 
damage of $15,000,000 I don’t know what the damage was in bushels, 
unless I know the average price of wheat for that year. If it had been 
stated in bushels in the first place, I wouldn’t be obliged to go back and 
find out what the price was. 
And the same thing is true throughout. I am heartily in sympathy 
with the plans of Mr. Hyslop. I believe there is a future for forecasting. 
I am wondering whether or not a little more determined cooperation on 
the part of the collaborators would not materially aid the pest survey. 
These collaborators are very busy. We have our own problems in our 
own states, and we can’t add on several additional projects, but the 
survey is a matter of such promise and of such great importance that it 
would seem to me we might take on, each of us, some one particular 
problem if that were assigned to us, and we would then see what we 
could do with it as part of the plan that Mr. Hyslop has proposed. 
Mr. J. A. Hyslop: I certainly wish to thank Professor Gossard for 
