February, ’18] 
FOOD PRODUCTION DISCUSSION 
109 
months has grown vastly in importance, with the crisis upon us, and 
it is now in a formative stage. This, if ever, is the most desirable time 
to regulate as far as possible the form of organization. 
The address of our President was exceedingly illuminative on this 
point, showing a great diversity in the form of organization. In any 
event, the organization should be such that the information should 
come from the entomology departments and they should be responsible 
for it. 
In connection with the growth of this special research work, we 
should not neglect this because it is important; there is this possible 
danger: that we may overdevelop, perhaps, under the immediate 
pressing needs the extension aspect of our problem, and while develop¬ 
ing our trackage and rolling stock, we may neglect the power house 
and find that eventually a discrepancy between the fund of informa¬ 
tion at hand and the extension of it. 
Mr. H. A. Gossard: Since Professor Osborn has not yet arrived, 
I can state what we have done in Ohio the past season and indicate 
briefly the conditions under which we work. At present Ohio does 
not have a department of extension entomology, organized as such, 
but an effort is being made by the State University authorities to have 
one in operation the coming summer. 
Early the past season, Dr. Herbert Osborn, who by common con¬ 
sent acts as a sort of honorary dean of the entomological forces of the 
state, invited the heads of the state entomological departments to meet 
at the University. We here attempted to coordinate a sort of pro¬ 
gram for extension work. 
It so happens in Ohio that economic work has been centered at the 
Experiment Station and I was, therefore, charged with the special 
responsibility of executing the general program and carrying out the 
details according to my judgment as to what could best be done with 
the limited resources at our command. I was handicapped from the 
start because of losing two of my experienced men to a sister state, 
wise enough to pay them more money than I could obtain for them. 
At the same time a campaign for increased food production was inaug¬ 
urated by the state executive departments acting conjointly with the 
extension forces of the State University, and the University authorities 
made us a visit one day and announced they had provided twenty or 
more men from the University staff to give body to the organization 
and that to complete it fifteen or twenty additional men from the sta¬ 
tion staff must be added to the force. While I was very dubious about 
the wisdom of reducing my staff any more, in consideration of the 
seeming emergency and to please those in charge of the state’s execu¬ 
tive machinery, I consented to release for a time my associate, Mr. 
