In a like way, the combination of a fungicide and an insecticide for the simultaneous treatment of insects and fungous diseases affecting the same crop, is beginning to be practiced and offers a field for future experimentation.

We look to the immediate future not only for the improvement of substances already in use as insecticides, but in a lesser degree for the discovery of new ones. Private individuals, from the commercial standpoint, are continually inventing and placing on the market new insect poisons. In the great majority of cases these remedies are but tributes to the gullibility of the great American public, but we may reasonably expect now and then a discovery of value. It is better to have a discovery of this character made privately, and patented to the gain of the individual, than not to have it made at all; but the added expense to the public at large furnishes the strongest argument for increased activity on the part of state and national workers in this direction. Every promising field should be explored by such officials, and every discovery should be made of free and instant avail to the people.

There is room for gain, without patent protection, to many manufacturers in the utilization of certain by-products, either as actual insecticides or as the carriers of poisons. Such products can often be placed on the market, by parties having exceptional facilities, at a reasonable or even large profit, and deserve, where worthy, every encouragement; but the ease with which patents are obtained, particularly in this class, offers a great temptation to the unprincipled and avaricious, and more than one mixture is on the market to-day which does not de-serve protection.

3. Much that I have just said applies with equal strength to the past and future of our third category, the invention and improvement of insecticide appliances.

Advances in this field have been rapid since the discovery of insecticides which can be economically applied to extensive field crops or orchards, and chiefly date from 1878, when the thorough investigation of the cotton-worm began. This insect multiplies so rapidly, and its food-plant is grown in fields of such great extent, that spraying machinery of considerable power was necessary for the application of those insecticides which were found to be of' avail. Many mechanical devices, however, had been invented a few years previously for destroying locusts on a large scale during the investigation of the Rocky Mountain locust (Caloptenus spretus). While the work of the U. S. Entomological Commission and of the U. S. Department of Agriculture have thus been potent in the development both of insecticides and of insecticide appliances, many important advances have come from private enterprise. Necessity here, as elsewhere, is the mother of invention, and while all countries have acknowledged American leadership in this field, many of the most ingenious insecticide machines have been produced abroad.

Admirable pumps for the subterranean injection of insecticides against the grape phylloxera and other root-inhabiting forms have been devised in France as the result of special need, and the whole class of knapsack-pumps for vineyard use has reached a high development in France and Italy. Although mainly directed for late years against fungi, they are admirably adapted to the spraying of insecticides in the vineyard and upon other low-growing crops. America alone, however, has seen any considerable degree of development of horse-power sprayers for field crops, although the recently invented "Strawsonizer" of England is an excellent machine for this purpose, barring its considerable cost.

In this field of work the official entomologist cannot afford to antagonize private enterprise; indeed, he may well assist it. Competition among manufacturers will soon reduce prices to an economical basis, although at the present time they are in some instances absurdly high. There will always be some difficulty in having a machine, invented by an official and unprotected by letters patent, manufactured for the trade. The old saying "What is everyone's business is no one's business" applies here. There are some 24 firms now manufacturing insecticide apparatus in the United States to-day, and the number is constantly on the increase. Many of the manufactures are essentially the same as, or but slight modifications of, those first described and recommended by official entomologists who have been unable or unwilling \o put their discoveries to commercial account. The economic entomologist points out the want and the means of meeting it; the cultivator creates the demand and the manufacturer supplies it.

To conclude: As one of the immediate results of the great increase in the number of paid entomologists who are able to devote all or nearly all of their time to the work, consequent on the recent establishment of the State Experiment Stations, we may expect, after a little preliminary repetition of previously known facts and remedies in the interest of accessibility, great advance along the lines of our first category. Our knowledge of the life-histories and habits of all plant-destroying pests, should take great and immediate strides, and, as I have shown, new preventives and remedies will undoubtedly result from the establishing of new facts of this character. Progress in the second and third categories will be much slower. Yet we may confidently anticipate advance in the cheapening of insecticides, and in better knowledge of their properties and the conditions governing their application. We may as confidently look for cheaper and better apparatus, though radical and important discoveries in this direction are hardly to be anticipated, however much hoped for.

C. V. Riley.