April, ’24] 
ENTOMOLOGICAL STATISTICS, DISCUSSION 
213 
sider as a full crop, a fi gure considerably higher than the highest known 
crop in any one locality. 
Mr. W. P. Flint: Regarding the figures Mr. Webster gave yester¬ 
day—it so happens that the man in charge of gathering the agricultural 
statistics in Illinois is quite interested in insects, and he, at my suggestion, 
sent out a number of questions to the 1500 crop reporters in the State 
regarding the damage caused by insects. Last year he sent out a 
question on chinch-bug damage. While there were some cases of over¬ 
estimating and under-estimating in individual counties, the average of 
these reports gave an 8% loss of the com crop of the State which was 
caused by chinch-bug in 1922, and which so far as we can tell was not 
very far wrong. 
I wonder if, in some of the other states, it would not be possible to 
get these questions included so that Entomologists could get some data 
from the crop reporters. 
Mr. W. E. Hinds: Mr. Chairman, I think there is something we 
entomologists can do in the way of educating statisticians, and getting 
them to take care of some of these inquiries in a more definite way than 
they have been accustomed to do in the past. 
A number of years ago in Alabama we made decided progress by 
getting the statisticians to gather data on the yield of lint cotton per 
acre for each county through the State. That has helped us decidedly, 
and has given us a means of gauging boll weevil damage from year to 
year in a degree that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. 
Mr. L. O. Howard: Whatever we decide about the damage done by 
insects and the amount that is saved through our labors, people will 
hardly believe us. Let me illustrate. A good many years ago Con¬ 
gress, in order to make committee places for all of its members, es¬ 
tablished a series of committees on expenditures in the different de¬ 
partments of the government—one for the Treasury Department, an¬ 
other for the Interior Department, and so on, including one for the 
Department of Agriculture. For years little or nothing was done by 
most of these committees; but an energetic new man was finally ap¬ 
pointed chairman of the committee on expenditures in the Department 
of Agriculture, and he asked the Secretary, “How much is your De¬ 
partment saving the government?” The Secretary passed the question 
on to the bureau chiefs. I asked Doctor Marlatt, Doctor Quaintance 
and the other chiefs of sections in the Bureau of Entomology to give me 
their estimates as to the saving in their particular branches. When I 
