ANNUAL REPORT—INDUSTRIAL NEEDS. 33 
not in the resources to be investigated, nor yet in the general 
policy of conducting such investigations. 
It is gratifying that there are evidences of a return to reason 
on the part of the state in all matters of this sort, and that cer¬ 
tain cautious steps towards an investigation into the hidden 
sources of our natural wealth have already been taken. Pro¬ 
per caution is well, but let there be no further interruptions to 
the work at last resumed until it is completed. 
INVESTIGATIONS INTO THE CAUSES OF INDUSTRIAL LOSS 
Are likewise deserving of aid from the state, in so far as they 
affect our own state exclusively, for the reason of economy; in 
so far as such causes are general in their influence, affecting 
other communities as well as our own, because it is the duty 
of every state to make contributions to the general welfare and 
the common progress of mankind. 
Under this head are properly included enquiries into the 
causes of those diseases of animals and plants which injurious¬ 
ly affect the public interests, and the means of arresting and 
eradicating them ; all important violations of the principles of 
political economy; and finally into the root and remedy of all 
social evils which retard the progress of communities. 
Here is opened an immense field. But its extent is not 
more than commensurate with its importance. The pleuro¬ 
pneumonia, the murrain, the foot-rot, the hog-cholera, neither 
of them appears very formidable at the first glance; but it 
would require many figures to foot up the losses they have 
each of them entailed upon the industry of this country. The 
wheat midge and the weevil are very little things, but the ruin 
they have sometimes wrought in a single year could onty be 
estimated by millions of dollars. So of the locust, the grass¬ 
hopper, the potato beetle, the coccus, the aphis, and a long list 
of destroying insects that annually prey upon the hard earned 
fruits of our labor. But insignificant as they are individually so 
long as they prove themselves more than a match for the hus¬ 
bandman and the orchardist, they are not unworthy the atten- 
3—Ag. Tr. 
