A. A. Arnold, Galesville - This little anecdote illustrates the fact that these influences of parents are above everything else. I went into a home not long ago where some of the children were in the habit of going to Sunday school. There was a motto on the wall, “Jesus reigns." Before I had been in the house five minutes, I heard the old lady swear, and in a few minutes after the old gentleman swore. They used the name of Jesus Christ a great many times in a very short interval of time. Those boys are all tobacco smokers and drinkers, and the girls are all married to drinkers. That is the result of home influence, notwithstanding

mottoes.

Another point I would like to have the convention consider; and that is, whether or not it would not be better for us as farmers of the state of Wisconsin to have some kind of an organization whereby we can make our influence felt. No party will ever advance any particular interest or idea until the public sentiment is brought up to a stage where the party feels its power. Public sentiment must become crystallized upon some idea or thought before a party will adopt it; but if a party does, the representatives of that party, or our several representatives in different localities will adopt it, and see it enforced.

Two classes of people are now represented in some way. They have organizations so that they can make their power felt. They concentrate upon some particular line of action.

We come here year after year and have our state convention, and men will advance their ideas pro and con. We never have yet, to my knowledge, agreed upon any definite line of action.

If a party undertakes to make a nomination or to adopt a platform, in the first place they have their caucuses, elect their delegates to the county convention, and from there to the state. convention. There they adopt their platform and there they nominate their men. The farmers represent the majority of the party. They furnish most of the products for transportation. There is nothing in these United States that I know of, in which the farmers are not interested more than any other one class. If so, why should we not make our wants known and our power felt. If so, if we have laudable purposes, why not organize upon some reasonable definite idea and we can carry out and enforce it.

Now we have a grange, and we are having now the Farmers' Alliance, that takes in farmers and all other classes of industry; everybody that is in favor of cheap transportation, for instance. Those are good things, but the grange excludes politics. The alliance makes that a specialty.

We as farmers cannot propose any line of action for the republican party or the democratic party, but we can do this. We can say that we want a certain thing, and we will see to it that certain men are elected upon a certain platform, if they will agree to certain things, otherwise not.

Now if we will adopt the same course that the alliance has taken, we may be able to concentrate upon some things, so that we can do what we want. We find fault with lawyers and doctors and ministers, and so on, that represent us in the legislature, because they do not do what we want them to do. They don't know what we want. There is no way by which they can tell, because we are eternally quarreling among ourselves. But if we will agree upon some kind of action, and elect delegates to a convention, and there agree upon what we want, I think we will get it.

THE ECONOMY OF PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGY.

Prof. O. S. WESTCOTT, Racine.

More than forty-three years ago, viz., on the 10th day of June, 1837, agreeably to an order of the general court of Massachusetts, was issued a commission authorizing a zoölogical and botanical survey of that state. His excellency, Gov. Everett, issued to the commissioners the following instructions:

"It is presumed to have been a leading object of the legislature in authorizing this survey, to promote the agricultural benefit of the commonwealth, and you will keep carefully in view the economical relations of every subject of your inquiry. By this, however, it is not intended that scientific order, method or comprehension should be departed from. At the same time, that which is practically useful will receive a proportionally greater share of attention than that which is merely curious; the promo

tion of comfort and happiness being the great human end of all science."

Here in a nut-shell did the governor of Massachusetts comprise everything to be investigated by the commission, as well as full instructions as to what should properly be disregarded, and the reasons therefor; "the promotion of human happiness," says he, "being the great human end of all science."

On this broad foundation did the commissioners of Massachusetts take their stand, and a part of the outcome of this commission, so far as the science of entomology is concerned, was a work which has since become a household word to all entomologists, and of which even the state of Massachusetts may be justly proud, to wit: The Treatise on some of the Insects injurious to Vegetation, by Thaddeus William Harris.

With regard to his work in conjunction with the other members of this commission, the author of this treatise himself says:

"Believing that the aid of science tends greatly to improve the condition of any people engaged in agriculture and horticulture, and that these pursuits form the basis of our prosperity, and are the safeguards of our liberty and independence, I have felt it to be my duty in treating the subject assigned to me, to endeavor to make it useful and acceptable to those persons whose honorable employment is the cultivation of the soil."

Surely to the labors of Harris are due, in large measure, the thanks of all farmers who can yet succeed in wresting from the rocky soil of New England a subsistence, however meager it be in comparison with the possibilities of the soil of the great west, yet so largely untilled. Harris well knew of the codling moth and the chinch bug, and the cucumber beetle, and the plum curculio, and the Hessian fly and scores and hundreds of other vermin that too often render comparatively futile the toil of the grain or fruit grower, and yet in his day, such scourges as the European cab. bage worm, the immigrant from the distant east, or the potato beetle from the west, or the Rocky Mountain grasshopper from the still further northwest, with hundreds and thousands of less notoriety, were yet unknown.

In 1854, when New York was suffering from the ravages of the

wheat midge, the executive committee of the State Agricultural Society asked of the legislature an appropriation for the purpose of instituting and conducting entomological investigations. The legislature granted an appropriation, and this beginning so stimulated inquiry in the state, that the appropriations for this department have been regularly made, and the reports of Dr. Fitch bear witness to the faithful labors of another pioneer in the science of economical entomology. Since his decease, his mantle has fallen upon no unworthy shoulders, as the office is now occupied by Dr. J. A. Lintner, whose work in the same direction has already secured for him a reputation world-wide.

In 1867, Illinois joined the rank of progressive states by appointing a state entomologist. The office has been successively filled by Benjamin D. Walsh, Dr. Wm. Le Baron and Dr. Cyrus Thomas, the two former of whom have passed away, and the latter is with us this evening. Concerning their work it is difficult to speak in the presence of the incumbent of to-day; but it is surely pardonable to state that the reports of the department in Illinois, one by Prof. Walsh, four by Dr. Le Baron, and four by Dr. Thomas, are no whit behind those of New York, Massachusetts or Missouri, and are indispensable to the working entomologists and scientific agriculturists of the world, the promise of the earlier reports being fully kept up by the character of those more

recent.

In 1868, Missouri took similar action. Prof. Charles V. Riley was for ten years the state entomologist of Missouri, and though comparatively a young man, he there acquired a reputation as an adept in the science of applied entomology second to none in the country, to which indeed his reputation is not limited.

His numerous and extensive reports have undoubtedly yielded the state of Missouri large returns on the outlay incident to his employment. He has been honored both at home and abroad, being the recipient of a gold medal from the National Academy of France, as a token of its appreciation of his researches with regard to the phylloxera of the grape, and also being honored by our own general government in being appointed chief of the United States Entomological Commission, whose researches have

already been very extensive if not exhaustive with reference to the Rocky Mountain locust and the cotton worm in particular, as being perhaps the most expensive pests that we are still cursed with.

It is perhaps worth while to note furthermore that these states have not been backward in other departments of scientific research. All have had at first their extensive and profitable geological surveys. Illinois in particular has now found it necessary to supplement her entomological investigations by endeavoring to answer such questions as which of our birds are beneficial and which injurious? If certain insects are injurious and certain others beneficial, it should be ascertained whether certain birds feed upon our insect foes or our insect friends, and hence whether the birds themselves are to be befriended or exterminated.

Investigations have also been carried on under the direction of that state in the line of ascertaining something with regard to the food of fishes. If we are overrun with an apparent plague of insects, and these insects serve as the special food for some of our choicest edible fishes, the plague may be but a blessing in disguise. If the market for corn had always been a satisfactory one, many a farmer would never have ascertained that the cheapest manner of getting his corn to market is in the form of pork. Indeed, the Rocky Mountain locust itself, though in some seasons it has devastated such an extensive territory, might nevertheless have been well utilized as food, had the farmers been fully aware of its nutritious properties, and thus its injuriousness might at least have been tolerated, if not actually disregarded, in comparison with its utility as an article of food.

It is worth while to notice that action in this direction in all these states has been initiated and pushed by the state agricultural organizations. They have made it their business to represent to the legislatures of these states that the farmers, as the wealth-producers of the states, are entitled to legislative ac tion, which can so easily and at so slight an outlay be the means of increasing the yield of staple crops.

If troops of foreign invaders were landing upon our soil, there would be no hesitancy on the part of the government to