Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
457 
Science applied to agriculture is overcoming the influences of 
excessive rain-fall and drouth. But the products of the farm are 
to-day, for all that science has done, as bare of remedies and as 
helpless from insect foes, as were the Egyptians under their scourge 
of' lice. We know of the existence of natural foes of our insect 
depredators, and of the use of poisonous applications for them, and 
they doubtless knew as much. But as with electricity and heat, 
they must be measured and harnessed before they can be said to 
truly be our servants. 
Thirty years ago, when the announcement was first made in 
France of the artificial propagation of fish, who would have be¬ 
lieved that in 1875 our state would appropriate a sum of money 
for this new but no longer doubtful source of increase of whole¬ 
some food. 
ENCOURAGE THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
Then why not expect that within a less period we may see libe¬ 
ral appropriations from public and private resources to encourage 
experiments in this most hopeful field of good to the producers of 
this country? The importance of this subject will be apparent 
when we consider that all other influences combined do not work 
against the success of agriculture so much as the destruction by 
insect life. 
It is now well established that the most hopeful means of com¬ 
bating our insect foes is through their natural enemies. This is 
exemplified by the position which the domestic cat holds in our 
economy of the farm. The same principle of action runs down 
through all the race of insect life. The glory of man as a physical 
being, is to direct the forces of nature for his good. When we 
consider what has been accomplished in reducing agriculture to a 
science, governed by rules founded upon a knowledge of the func¬ 
tions and habits of the honey-bee, why may we not expect in due 
time to fathom other and more obscure insect life so as to recog¬ 
nize our friends from our enemies among them, and promote the 
extension of the former for our good. It is well, at least, for us 
now to look diligently for the advent of some natural foe of every 
species of insects that devour our substance. 
A few years since the oyster shell bark louse was thought the 
worst foe of the orchard, and the world of specifics w r as ransacked 
